The harsh truth of this plagues me at times.

"I'm aware of how self-involved wanting to give can be… I wanted [Catherine Keener’s] character [in Please Give] to express that and to do ridiculous things, to show that wanting to give doesn’t make you graceful and doesn’t redeem you."

- nicole holofcener

From now on --

-- less notes on the subject of writing --

-- and of myself --

-- and more writing.

From now on, no more shouted doubts, no more of the roots of the tree, but the foliage of it. This is a coming of age. A man must keep his doubts to himself and prove his work instead.

- Kerouac

I detect a strong dualism -- between loneliness, morality, humility, sternness, critical Christianism -- and charm, open-mindedness, dask (the attempt at dash), humourousness, Faustian power and lust for experience. These two sets of impulses will never cease to work in me. Which at least makes good fuel for getting around.

- Kerouac

I'm a little rusty. Oh and what a whole lot of bunk I could write this morning about my fear that I can't write, I'm ignorant and worst of all, I'm an idiot trying to achieve something I can't possibly do. It's in the will, in the heart! To hell with these rotten doubts. I defy them and spit on them. Merde!

Jack Kerouac
22 June 1947

Joan: Do you know who you are?
Adam: I don’t try to figure it out, really.
Joan: Maybe it’s not important, ya know. It’s about what we do for each other, isn’t it?

I'm having such a hard time, lately, letting what I do for others be enough to satisfy me.

When Allegra first started climbing, she would hang in one spot for too long, contemplating the best way to make her next grab. Her arms and fingers would begin to burn with exhaustion. She noticed that the experienced climbers moved very, very quickly. Staying still was more work than moving; thinking too much was fatal. Allegra supposed there was a lesson there. She learned things quickly, but she didn't much like lessons.

- The Jane Austen Book Club

Troy: You see, Lainey, this is all we need. A couple of smokes, a cup o’ coffee, and a little bit of conversation. You and me and five bucks.

- Reality Bites.

I don't smoke.
I don't like coffee.
I don't need the five bucks.
Just that little bit of conversation.

Anna: The only thing keeping you from being happy is the belief that you are alone.

Don: What if that's true?

Anna: Then you can change.

Don: People don't change.

We are intrepid.
We carry on.

"I'm full of bad feeling."

Mrs. Murry stroked Meg's shaggy head. "Do you know why?"

"I hate being an oddball," Meg said. "It's hard on Sandy and Dennys, too. I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're just able to pretend they are. I try to pretend, but it isn't any help."

"You're much too straightforward to be able to pretend to be what you aren't," Mrs. Murry said.

- Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

"Life is filled with abstractions...

"...and the only way we make heads or tails of it is through intuition. Intuition is seeing the solution--seeing it, knowing it. It's emotion and intellect going together...

"Personally, I think intuition can be sharpened and expanded through meditation, diving into the Self. There's an ocean of consciousness inside each of us, and it's an ocean of solutions. When you dive into that ocean, that consciousness, you enliven it. You don't dive for specific solutions; you dive to enliven that ocean of consciousness. Then your intuition grows and you have a way of solving those problems--knowing when it's not quite right and knowing a way to make it feel correct for you. That capacity grows and things go much more smoothly."

- David Lynch

I really dig this.

(This is long but please, bear with me.)

Lynch talks about intuition as an "ocean of consciousness" that can be nurtured through meditation. I think it can also be expanded through exposure and experience.

Well; maybe "exposure" and "experience" are the wrong words. Let me try to explain. I quoted Robert McGee on story structure last fall:

"We all walk this earth thinking, or at least hoping, that we understand ourselves, our intimates, society, and the world. We behave accordingly to what we believe to be the truth of ourselves, the people around us, and the environment. But this is a truth we cannot know absolutely. This is what we believe to be true.

"We also believe we're free to make any decision whatsoever, to take any action whatsoever. But every choice and action we make and take, spontaneous or deliberate, is rooted in the sum total of our experience, in what has happened to us in actuality, imagination, or dream to that moment. We then choose to act based on what this gathering of life tells us will be the probable reaction from our world. It's only then, when we take action, that we discover necessity.

"Necessity is absolute truth. Necessity is what in fact happens when we act. This truth is known--and can only be known--when we take action into the depth and breadth of our world and brave its reaction. This reaction is the truth of our existence at that precise moment, no matter what we believed the moment before."

By McGee's explanation, I feel like the "sum total of our experience" shapes our intuition, and intuition is what we tap into when necessity prompts us to act. To me, McGee is saying, truth is in the reaction. Reaction stems from intuition. Intuition is our "ocean of consciousness," our personal truth.

How do we elicit reaction? We experience. We expose ourselves to new art, new happenings, new places and people and things and ideas. (New nouns? Haha.) Sometimes we partake. Sometimes we observe. Either way, if we are conscious that our reaction is a bit of our own personal truth, part of our own self, we can use that consciousness to identify the truth in the reactions, to sharpen our intuitions.

Jarmusch says to "steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination...select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul" to maintain authenticity. I say, do this also to sharpen intuition. Absorb everything, and be conscious of everything to which you react.

Lynch has something to say about action and reaction himself. He starts off talking about how he fell in love with the idea of the "art life" in high school and wanted to devote himself exclusively to painting.

"The art life means a freedom...it doesn't have to be selfish; it just means that you need time.

"[Painter] Bushnell Keeler...always had this expression: 'If you want to get one hour of good painting in, you have to have four hours of uninterrupted time.'

"And that's basically true. You don't just start painting. You have to sit for a while and get some kind of mental idea in order to go and make the right moves...The idea just needs to be enough to get you started, because, for me, whatever follows is a process of action and reaction. It's always a process of building and then destroying. And then, out of this destruction, discovering a thing and then building on it... Then it's a matter of sitting back and studying it and studying it and studying it; and suddenly, you find you're leaping up out of your chair and going in and doing the next thing. That's action and reaction."

Joseph Campbell says that destruction and then the rebuilding of something new and better is the work of the hero. The true hero looks deep within himself, identifies the demons of dream and myth that we avoid because they threaten our security and comfort, and in tackling them, discovers his true self. Upon resurfacing, he becomes something better, and then helps the world become better as well.

Isn't, then, the work of the artist the work of the hero?

I am in love with exploring these ideas.

"Sewer Walking"

You and me, we used to talk
Like a river underground, the sewer where we used to walk.
The hole at the end empties out to the pier
Where paperboats disappear

Me, I try to send this note,
Float it like a paper boat,
But paper sinks and words are weak.
I try but I don't speak

Join together in the silent snow
Turn our faces up to see
Not endless night, but day
A pier
And you and me, talking.

- Unknown

"I will not allow it to be more man's nature than woman's to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather," [said Captain Harville.]

"Your feelings may be the strongest," replied Anne, "but the same spirit of analogy will authorize me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer-lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments...

"I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures. I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of every thing great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as--if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

- Persuasion

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

- John 8:32

I want to be free.

The more we struggle for "normalcy," be it society's definition of normalcy or simply what we perceive as comfortable and regular, the more perverted and twisted our condition becomes - the harder we grasp for control, the more out of control we spin.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

...in short, I was afraid.

"...There was this . . . entire life behind things. And this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever."

Peter: I still don't know what to write about.

James: Write about the whale.

Peter: What whale?

James: The one that's trapped in your head, dying to get out.

- Finding Neverland

For the first few weeks of the new school year, Nadia hardly spoke. All the sixth graders--like Mrs. Olinski herself--were new to Epiphany Middle School, but Nadia--like Mrs. Olinski herself--seemed the most disconnected. Both were watchers and waiters, cautious about being friendly, about showing themselves.

Then on the middle Monday in October, Nadia Diamondstein arrived in class with smile and addressed her teacher. "Don't you think, Mrs. Olinski, that autumn is the most glorious time of year?" Mrs. Olinski confessed that it was her favorite season and told Nadia that she sometimes felt guilty because she thought she ought to prefer spring, with its pledge to make the lilies bloom again.

Every morning thereafter, Nadia smiled as she entered class and greeted Mrs. Olinski with a word from her southern past. She said, "Hey."

Mrs. Olinski knew that Nadia Diamondstein was not only incandescently beautiful but was also a star.

- The View From Saturday

E. L. Konigsburg

"Okay, I can handle this. I'll just get myself into a Zen place. Play music. Cook. Write. Focus."

19. Accept loss forever

- Jack Kerouac
Belief & Technique for Modern Prose

I know that I know it.

"The response we make when we 'believe' a work of the imagination is that of saying: 'This is the way things are. I have always known it without being fully aware that I knew it. Now in the presence of this play or novel or poem (or picture or piece of music) I know that I know it.'"
- Thornton Wilder

I would add "person" to that list.
Art is an awakening to something you always knew existed but were never quite aware of.
You could say the same about love, I suppose.
I love being woken up. Especially by people I know.