Joseph Grammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "grappling-hook"
Nothing is Illuminated (Just Kidding)
At our core, it's hard to start new habits. I realize I'm using this blog as a whiny confessional, by the way, but so be it: I'm not equipped to discuss the situation in Gaza, and I prefer to keep my opinions about the Ukrainian crisis to myself, since I actually know real humans in Ukraine.
Even slamming down these paragraphs is excruciating. The sickly white of the computer screen (oh, first world problems), the pulsing in my forehead as I fight to think of the next word or phrase. Then, editing that phrase to make it palatable to a few potential readers; it makes me want to crawl under a sofa like Gregor Samsa and click my little pincers together (not a euphemism for masturbation, I swear).
Granted, it was cloudy today, and whenever the air pressure builds up, I find myself spiraling into a weird, foggy malaise, which is when I read my old journal entries and remind myself of my true actions and values, so I don't run off and do something idiotic. I attempt to reach out to other people and say something brief, something that sends a grappling hook into another's heart or brain and convinces her to reply. Then I get all excited and happy to exist in the world. I'm basically, then, a less shaggy puppy with acne.
Baritone voice in my head, wreathed in biblical reverb: NO ONE EVER SAID WRITING WOULD BE EASY.
I know, I know, but I'm building a habit of complaining, since I tend to never do that, preferring instead to bottle my emotions and explode every few months in a fiery (not-all-that-impressive-but-still) rage, which is bad for all my neurotransmitters, and adipose tissue, and probably for my teeth as well. So here it is, complaining.
I know all this must sound like I don't do anything except wallow in my own filth, but I swear I don't. I value helping other humans and building something reasonably lasting and contributing in some miniscule way to the progress of our teeming species. Even if it's just a story about farts or something.
Recently I had a conversation with a friend who wanted to make movies for a living. She was unsure, because she felt guilty devoting her life to a craft that didn't appear to have an immediate tangible benefit to humankind. Why not be a surgeon and save a countable number of children's lives?
This is a sound logic, and one I often employ when I'm berating myself at my current standing in life. "You used to have ambition!" I say, preferably wagging my fist in a mirror. "You wanted a Ph.D, or an M.D., and you dreamed of creating a cool theory about schizophrenia!"
What, then, do stories give us? The stock answers are hope, knowledge, entertainment, deeper understanding of the human condition. The fact that a group of words could potentially have any of those effects on another person is astounding, and a beautiful reason to learn the craft. What's more, I believe it's possible to help someone else through writing, if only by distracting her from delinquent taxes.
Uplifting, right? The humanities have some human worth. That said, however, I certainly feel a discrete selfishness when I write. A little needle of power or comfort, a push to have it all my way, if only on paper. This reminds me of a nonfiction Milan Kundera book I read a while back, in which he said (I'm paraphrasing and bastardizing here) that an author must lash himself to the pole of his monomania as he writes, by the mere fact of trying to express himself.
Now, I think there's a spectrum here; Bret Easton Ellis disclosed in an interview that he writes his books only for himself, and about his current place in his own life. There's one end. Then you have Upton Sinclair, who fought to change unfair living conditions and labor laws with his novels.
So is my book for me or you?
I'm no Upton Sinclair. I wrote my novel about the power imbalance in Okinawa, Japan, but I can't imagine it will do more than raise a mild amount of awareness about that particular region of the world. I would, of course, be happy if this occurred; more humans know where Okinawa is! But I also wrote it for myself. I wrote it because I walked around that island and felt sorry for myself as a confused 23-year-old, and because I felt the jittery hope of wandering inside a country I had never before visited. I wrote it because I forged a stupid, brief connection with that place, and thought about the work I was doing there (which I think was important), and thought about my father and grandfather being stationed there, on the U.S. military bases in the region, and thought about my future and old patterns of behavior and sleeplessness and drug abuse and suicide and a litany of other me-centric events, as well as the imagined lives of all the other people on Okinawa, the musicians and cooks and laborers and children and politicians, and I made myself talk to someone in Japanese every day, in order to make myself uncomfortable and experience a modicum of the discomfort he or she must feel living in the shadow of American military installations, and I felt a joy at meeting the people in the bases themselves, because those people were cooperative and kind and cool, and I felt a deep love for the world while I walked around the pristine beaches at night. I loved buying vegetables by myself at a market tucked away in an alley off Heiwa Street, and I loved walking into a guitar shop and asking, "Might I play one of your instruments, please?" in my stuttering, choking Japanese, and then strumming a few chords in a soundproofed room with a bowl of yakitori in my distended belly, imagining what it might be like to be one of the ghosts said to haunt the Air Force base at night.
There are more well-traveled people than me. There are more capable and determined individuals. At heart, I am just a meandering, wide-eyed kid who wants to observe and know what is foreign to him, who wants also to preserve a meaningful connection to that world (I have no desire to be apathetic and numb, thank you). I know this post degenerated into meaningless impressions, but I thank you for reading to the end, if in fact you are reading this. Because the reason I write is to toss out one of those mental grappling hooks and catch it in your face (painlessly, for the most part). Then I can drag my way over so we can start a conversation.
I hope we exchange hooks until our cells commit mass apoptosis. Peace and love, world.
Even slamming down these paragraphs is excruciating. The sickly white of the computer screen (oh, first world problems), the pulsing in my forehead as I fight to think of the next word or phrase. Then, editing that phrase to make it palatable to a few potential readers; it makes me want to crawl under a sofa like Gregor Samsa and click my little pincers together (not a euphemism for masturbation, I swear).
Granted, it was cloudy today, and whenever the air pressure builds up, I find myself spiraling into a weird, foggy malaise, which is when I read my old journal entries and remind myself of my true actions and values, so I don't run off and do something idiotic. I attempt to reach out to other people and say something brief, something that sends a grappling hook into another's heart or brain and convinces her to reply. Then I get all excited and happy to exist in the world. I'm basically, then, a less shaggy puppy with acne.
Baritone voice in my head, wreathed in biblical reverb: NO ONE EVER SAID WRITING WOULD BE EASY.
I know, I know, but I'm building a habit of complaining, since I tend to never do that, preferring instead to bottle my emotions and explode every few months in a fiery (not-all-that-impressive-but-still) rage, which is bad for all my neurotransmitters, and adipose tissue, and probably for my teeth as well. So here it is, complaining.
I know all this must sound like I don't do anything except wallow in my own filth, but I swear I don't. I value helping other humans and building something reasonably lasting and contributing in some miniscule way to the progress of our teeming species. Even if it's just a story about farts or something.
Recently I had a conversation with a friend who wanted to make movies for a living. She was unsure, because she felt guilty devoting her life to a craft that didn't appear to have an immediate tangible benefit to humankind. Why not be a surgeon and save a countable number of children's lives?
This is a sound logic, and one I often employ when I'm berating myself at my current standing in life. "You used to have ambition!" I say, preferably wagging my fist in a mirror. "You wanted a Ph.D, or an M.D., and you dreamed of creating a cool theory about schizophrenia!"
What, then, do stories give us? The stock answers are hope, knowledge, entertainment, deeper understanding of the human condition. The fact that a group of words could potentially have any of those effects on another person is astounding, and a beautiful reason to learn the craft. What's more, I believe it's possible to help someone else through writing, if only by distracting her from delinquent taxes.
Uplifting, right? The humanities have some human worth. That said, however, I certainly feel a discrete selfishness when I write. A little needle of power or comfort, a push to have it all my way, if only on paper. This reminds me of a nonfiction Milan Kundera book I read a while back, in which he said (I'm paraphrasing and bastardizing here) that an author must lash himself to the pole of his monomania as he writes, by the mere fact of trying to express himself.
Now, I think there's a spectrum here; Bret Easton Ellis disclosed in an interview that he writes his books only for himself, and about his current place in his own life. There's one end. Then you have Upton Sinclair, who fought to change unfair living conditions and labor laws with his novels.
So is my book for me or you?
I'm no Upton Sinclair. I wrote my novel about the power imbalance in Okinawa, Japan, but I can't imagine it will do more than raise a mild amount of awareness about that particular region of the world. I would, of course, be happy if this occurred; more humans know where Okinawa is! But I also wrote it for myself. I wrote it because I walked around that island and felt sorry for myself as a confused 23-year-old, and because I felt the jittery hope of wandering inside a country I had never before visited. I wrote it because I forged a stupid, brief connection with that place, and thought about the work I was doing there (which I think was important), and thought about my father and grandfather being stationed there, on the U.S. military bases in the region, and thought about my future and old patterns of behavior and sleeplessness and drug abuse and suicide and a litany of other me-centric events, as well as the imagined lives of all the other people on Okinawa, the musicians and cooks and laborers and children and politicians, and I made myself talk to someone in Japanese every day, in order to make myself uncomfortable and experience a modicum of the discomfort he or she must feel living in the shadow of American military installations, and I felt a joy at meeting the people in the bases themselves, because those people were cooperative and kind and cool, and I felt a deep love for the world while I walked around the pristine beaches at night. I loved buying vegetables by myself at a market tucked away in an alley off Heiwa Street, and I loved walking into a guitar shop and asking, "Might I play one of your instruments, please?" in my stuttering, choking Japanese, and then strumming a few chords in a soundproofed room with a bowl of yakitori in my distended belly, imagining what it might be like to be one of the ghosts said to haunt the Air Force base at night.
There are more well-traveled people than me. There are more capable and determined individuals. At heart, I am just a meandering, wide-eyed kid who wants to observe and know what is foreign to him, who wants also to preserve a meaningful connection to that world (I have no desire to be apathetic and numb, thank you). I know this post degenerated into meaningless impressions, but I thank you for reading to the end, if in fact you are reading this. Because the reason I write is to toss out one of those mental grappling hooks and catch it in your face (painlessly, for the most part). Then I can drag my way over so we can start a conversation.
I hope we exchange hooks until our cells commit mass apoptosis. Peace and love, world.
