Writing practice: just write a narrative
[try not to think too much, treat it like morning pages, don’t let your critical mind disparage anything your about to write, stifling you. just get the words out, get used to writing]
[just write]
In 1843 my grandfather left home without notice. He was 16 years old, and wanted to find out not what the world was like, but what he could handle. It was less self-discovery, more self-assessment.
He grew up in what would nowadays be considered the suburbs, of Chicago. He’d seen enough of the simple, slow life to see that it didn’t challenge its people sufficiently, and saw enough of the city life to know that cities don’t necessarily challenge or change others – it was whether the individual allowed himself to be challenged. [just write, don’t critique]
Growing up, he’d watch people. Their faces, in particular. Their expressions, in particular the eyes but how the eyes reflected the carriage of the face itself. He saw in children his own age, some children, a carefree exuberance but lacking the awareness of a darker world than that which existed in the protected boundaries of their idyllic lives. In others his age, he saw a despair, a despair wrought from parental dysfunction. Never from poverty. Children had a sense of differences, but for the most they only knew their own experiences, and that became their standard for “normal”.
In the adults, he noticed other things. [like what? just write] There was a heaviness about many of them. A heaviness not from burdens overwhelming, but from burdens allowed to be overwhelming. As if the way they viewed their burdens added to the weight, and the way they viewed the weight added to the overwhelm. He tried to understand where this came from – this acceptance of a burden made real in their minds. For some, it was a burden borne from guilt, from others regret, still others despair. But perhaps common to all was the burden of helplessness, or at least the feeling of helplessness. Not real helplessness – they were alive, they could act, they had bodies that could move and perform functions, they had minds that could think and process and calculate – if they were used for that purpose. So why the helplessness? It was psychological, not real. It was internal, not imposed.
“At what point,” he’d ask himself, “did people switch from carefree children to psychologically burdened adults weighted with a feeling of helplessness?” What this the normal course of events? Was this what he was to expect in the future which lay before him? It was these questions, and more, that he wanted to answer. And to answer them, he had to experience, sooner than later, the life experiences he thoughts adults had that caused them to feel that way. Only then, he reasoned, could he truly understand. And perhaps, in understanding them, he could understand himself. And in understanding himself, he could learn how to help himself and others.
[keep writing, don’t think of plot, just write whatever]
He left a note. “Dear mother and father, I’m off to search for some answers. I don’t expect to be back until I’ve found them, and I don’t expect I’ll find them until I’m much older. Love, Abraham.” [maybe he wasn’t an Abraham, but who cares] And that was it. That was all his parents had of a parting embrace, and that was all they would have in anticipation of his return. And when he did return, one of them would be dead. [not telling which one, maybe he returns as a zombie…]
[maybe try a letter]
[no, journal]
[no, letter – more like dialogue, which I really need to improve]
[just write a letter, who cares to whom, just write]
“Dear Maggie,
This is the first night of my journey, and I’m sleeping in a field. I walked about 15 miles today, I think, mostly through prairies and along what looked to be long-forgotten roads to nowhere (although I did see horse prints for one stretch in the dirt) [good job, they didn’t have cars back then]. Mostly I thought – about what I was doing, whether it makes sense (still not sure), what I’m after (that I know), and whether or not where I’m going will help me find it (quite unsure, but time is perhaps the only luxury I have in abundance). I didn’t find too many answers, but this is day 1.
[how did he eat? bugs? what did he see?]
[i mean not that he ate bugs, but were they biting him? was he regretting leaving home?]
[writing is really hard. just keep writing]
I thought I’d see beautiful wildlife, but mostly it was grass. Some wild flowers, none of which I could name. [just keep writing]
It was funny – I thought about the time we tried fishing in the stream by your house. When you brought a bucket, thinking you might be able to scoop the fish if you were fast enough.
I don’t know why I walked as long as I did today. Was I escaping, or getting further along my journey? Or maybe I just didn’t know what else to do than to keep walking. [the exercise is not to write great fiction, just to break through the mental barrier of your self-critiquing, stifling, conscious mind telling you whatever you’re about the write is garbage so don’t write it. again, just keep writing without thinking]
My feet hurt today, but it was ok. I felt the sun on my neck, my face, radiating from the prairies, the trees, the rocks along a stream I passed. The things, these inanimate things, radiating the warmth from millions of miles away. And on this little planet, this little speck, it warmed my face, my skin, my clothes. It was like a life imbued into these things. So what if it was artificial life? I know they aren’t alive. Actually, yes, the trees and prairie grass are alive, never mind that. [keep writing even if it doesn’t make sense, just write]. I watched bugs flitter about – novel and interesting when not pestering me, damned nuisances when they were. Birds flying on invisible air. All on this little speck.
And what are we trying to do, we ants on this speck? Your life, and mine, and so many others. What meaning is there? Toward what purpose? Even if there is no purpose, what meaning can we give it, other than to live and die? Maybe all those adults in my town knew better than I. Maybe they knew there was no purpose, so why bother? But even if there is no purpose, is it right not to bother? Maybe they answered that question for themselves, maybe unconsciously [did they know of the unconscious in 1943? I think Freud was late 19th C, but whatever, just keep writing]. But assuming there is no grand purpose, or even a small purpose, or even a miniscule purpose [I wrote ‘infinitesimal’ but I think that word doesn’t mean what I think it means, if memory serves]. And if we are to create our own purpose, how do we do that? How do we go about doing it? How do we going about thinking about how to do it?
I’m sorry, I know I’m using this letter as an excuse to think in ink, but that’s how it goes.
There’s not much that’s rational about living vs laying down and dying. Why bother, other than to prevent a death which we all shun? Perhaps without our rational consciousness, if we were reduced to primal animals, there would be no thought of “why?”. We’d simply live, then eventually die, with no questioning of it all. And maybe our rational minds just create reasons, or create questions, because it tries to create order and meaning out of something which has none. As though we creatively tell ourselves an ever-changing story whose only purpose is to make us feel better about having nothing meaningful to discuss. And perhaps, at the most basic level, the reason we continue to live is to forestall death, and in the process we want to make our lives easier/better. And perhaps the only thing that ties us to the next generation, that provides us reason to think about or care about the next generation, is that we have an emotional bond to our children and other little ones.
I’m sweating, and my hand is cramping. Sorry, I know this isn’t really legible, but I just feel the need to get it out.
It’s twilight now, the sky is growing bluer and I can see some stars in the eastern sky.
What mysteries must lie within each one of us. We each are presented with an existence which has no meaning, and throughout our lives we try to create meaning, to find it, to define it. For what? For a sense of accomplishment? Or purpose? So that we can go into unconscious oblivion with satisfaction of live worth living in an existence with no meaning? Are we just fooling ourselves?
What burdens we place on ourselves, that which we assume. And perhaps it all goes back to this idea of meaning. Is a life with purpose more meaningful than a life without? And is there a standard of judgment? Or is this a free-for-all where nobody is right, nobody is wrong, there are no standards, and anything goes? What is this business about life, liberty, property? Why does it matter? What’s the point of creating conditions by which we can develop and grow if there’s ultimately no reason for us to develop and grow except for our own desire for a better life (whatever that means)?
And is there a standard of good and bad, better and worse? Is it better than people live in houses instead of caves? Eat cultivated food rather than picked berries? Wear clothing instead of being naked? Well, eating is better than not. Having clothing to protect from heat and cold is better than not. And while I do enjoy the prospect of sleeping under the stars for as long as I care to, how will I feel in the hazy heat of summer or the frigid winter? Pain is a motivator to remove the pain, that’s for sure. But what is pain, but electro-chemical impulses in our brains? What if we couldn’t feet the pain of a sunburn or of a frost-bitten limb? Or of hunger? Life would not doubt be much shorter, but would that be worse?
And if we work to eliminate the pain? Pain perhaps is the primary motivator to improve our standard of living. That’s fine – pain hurts, it’s supposed to, and artificially dulling the pain would only quicken death, as pain is a signal that we are expose to that which works to our destruction. Ok fine. The prime motivator is removal and avoidance of pain. I can understand. So we’re hardwire not to enjoy pain, and pain is hardwired to tell us something is anti-life. So we’re hardwired to be pro-life, or at least our own life. I can understand that – this desire for life is hardwired, and to eliminate it would cause death. So the desire for life produces pain, and pain creates sharp boundaries between pain and non-pain. So life produces pain, pain produces guiderails, and we follow the guiderails to avoid pain which generally steers us in the direction of continued life, which is the primary motivator.
Ok, and then once we remove present pain, we think to the future and want to avoid future pain. Pain that doesn’t exist except in our imaginations. But if our understanding of the world is accurate enough, we learn to be reasonable predictors of that which would cause pain and that would might help to prevent it occurence.
Ok, but then we also have another signal – pleasure in various forms. We first work to avoid pain, and once we feel pleasure we try to maintain it. Pleasure though, it trickier than pain – pleasure isn’t necessarily a good indicator of pro-life. In fact, it might be pretty severely anti-life, but disguised as something that is pro-life. Pleasure can be deceptive. But not really. It’s not the pleasure signal that deceives us, but our understanding and interpretation of the pleasure signal. But the same can be said for pain – pain from physical exercise suggests we should avoid that, but our understanding of the benefit of exercise tells us that the pain is a signal not of anti-life but of temporary detriment toward a longer-term benefit. So not all pain indicated anti-life. It’s just a signal that has to be interpreted, as is pleasure. And to the extent that we have the knowledge properly to understand the signals, we have a better chance of eliminating anti-life pain and pleasure and welcoming (and even seeking) pro-life pain and pleasure.
But that knowledge isn’t automatic. It must be acquired by observing the world, observing ourselves, and learning from the past, and testing and experimenting. And to do that, we have to have the resources, meaning a sufficient supply of food, sufficient shelter to sustain life, clothing etc. So in our desire to continue life, and to correctly use the guiderails of pain and pleasure to direct our effort to sustain life and maintain life-promoting pain and pleasure, we must improve our conditions beyond immediate survival. Because with immediate survival there is only the avoidance extreme pain and threat of pain. So we have to be productive enough, and knowledgeable enough, to provide for our survival to the extent that we can spend time reflecting, experimenting, learning, observing, etc.
The interesting thing is how quickly we normalize what we consider pain and pleasure. Things that are pleasurable today are no longer pleasurable after a month of constancy. And things that are painful today, we numb to in time and they no longer have the sting they once did. And so there’s an variation and elevation of the pleasure that produces the same response, and there’s always new pain that comes around which is as severe as the old pain to which we’ve become numbed.
And there’s this issue of numbing. Maybe these adults I’ve observed have deliberately psychologically numbed themselves to pains that live produces that they think they cannot in any way eliminate, so they work to reduce the effect. Of course this is a rational action if you truly think there is nothing you can do to eliminate the pain, and so you just try to reduce the effect it has on you through psychological means. But perhaps that reduces our ability to feel pleasure, or the pleasure sensors numb over and stop working. Where we are simply attuned only to feel pain, and then we have the automatic response not to try to eliminate or avoid it, but simply to numb to it.
So anyway, the better we are at living within the guiderails of pain and pleasure, the better we need to become. Unless something sets us back to the beginning, where we once again work to eliminate the most basic of pains (hunger, temperature, disease) and to feel the most basic of pleasures (a full stomach, a non-painful environment, a basic level of physical health). And maybe that’s useful in a way – if we reach a point where we find no more pleasure, and experience only the pains of inconvenience and ennui, then we need a shock to the system to bring us down a few notches so we have something to strive toward again.
So we are hardwired to work for the continuation of life. And we are hardwired with rough, but faulty, indicators of that which is anti-life (pain) and that which is pro-life (pleasure). But those indicators give false positives and false negatives, and we have to work to acquire the knowledge to know which is which, because the knowledge isn’t hardwired. And in gaining knowledge and improving our capacity to navigate the path of a continuance of life, we find that we must seek new sources of pleasure and/or elevated experiences of pleasure, and we find that while the basic pains might no longer exist we are pushed and pulled by minor pains that have become major and by psychological pains which are perhaps far worse than most physical pains. Because psychological pains cause despair, which cause numbness, which prevents us from being receptive to pain and pleasure signals, and we live in a world of gray numbness where everything is an avoidance of a nebulous cloud of anti-happiness.
And so maybe one of the challenges we grow to face is to counteract the numbness, which really means counteracts the despair. And what causes despair but a belief that we cannot change our circumstances. And where does that belief come from? It requires a vision of the future where our situation cannot change from our present. And our pasts no doubt have an effect on how we envision our futures – if we have been stuck in a bad situation and have remained no matter what we tried, then we are more likely to despair of the future and seek numbness in the present.
Yes, that’s tricky, because there is physical pain and pleasure but also psychological pain and pleasure. And the indicators are different and the signals get crossed. Or perhaps it’s the psychological aspect which mixes up the physical ones. So maybe, beyond a certain age, our biggest issue is learning to properly calibrate the psychological indicators so that they don’t act against us. And how do we calibrate them? That’s also tricky. That depends on what we value and how we see and interpret the world.
So there’s a parallel path – we have to develop our understanding of the world while also developing our understanding of ourselves and how we can establish psychological guiderails that act in our true self-interest, meaning in a way that is truly pro-life and anti-death. But while objective assessment of the world can be difficult because it’s a complex place, objective self-assessment in ever harder because we have a built-in bias against self-critique (a false pain signal) and for ego-inflation (creating a false pleasure signal). And maybe this is where humility comes in, where we have to have enough humility to accept ourselves as we are, while also having enough self-esteem to take see the humility as beneficial if it helps us see ourselves objectively and learn how to improve our psychological health.
[ok, that’s 2 hours. but this wasn’t a narrative by any stretch. at least I wrote]