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Collection Source Link: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
by T. S. Eliot

I FIRST READ PRUFROCK as a 13 year-old boy. I was sifting through my mother's library, mining gold for my own letter writing--to woo the ladies with my knowledge of poetry. There's some sexy stuff in this poem ("We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By seagirls wreathed in seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us and we drown. /") and I--that eager, horny little boy--thought I understood something about the world.

I had wisdom. I knew poetry. Joke. Puke.

In high school I chose to write about Prufrock for a class, because I loved it (loved me) so much. I wanted to show how the narrator, Prufrock, of course, was so alone, so stoic (I was always impressed with stoic, as I was with what I perceived to be Hemingway's stoicism), so determined to pass up truth, to pass up his own happiness for fear of harming others ("Do I dare / disturb the universe?").

If, like me, you're impressed with this sort of "noble", perhaps "selfless" stoicism, there's a lot of beauty in Prufrock.

In college, however, I learned where the quotation at the poem's beginning comes from, and, perhaps, what it means. Here's the translation of that passage from Dante's Inferno:

In T.S. Eliot's poem, Prufrock refuses to answer "the question," and finds all sorts of clever ways to avoid answering it ("Oh do not ask what is it / let us go and make our visit. / ") or proving that the answer wouldn't have any lasting value:

In the Inferno passage, the speaker can answer "the question" because his words won't make it back to the land of the living--he's dead and in hell. But Prufrock is alive. It isn't stoicism that holds him back, but rather ignorance and fear.

I was crushed when I learned this about Prufrock--not only had I not understood my favorite poem in the slightest, but the worth and value in which I wanted to believe was not to be found.

It gets worse: in the weird light of my new perspective, I pursued every piece of critical writing ever published concerning Prufrock. Essay after essay used a term I thought I understood without simply looking up the damn word in the dictionary. Eventually, I did:

T.S. Eliot, had never intended Prufrock to be stoic, or noble. or even a gentleman. Prufrock is ridiculous. Prufrock is ignorant. Prufrock is pompous: Prufrock the peacock.

And the worst bit was finding out that Prufrock was I, he is me. My "understanding" made me important. So I thought. In reality, the poem is tremendous, hollow, and brutal; but Prufrock is a joke, and a sad joke at that.

Source Link: The Entire T.S. Eliot Collection

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Work Cited

"bathos." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 31
Jan. 2006. Answers.com: Bathos

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Poetry. Answers Corporation, 2005.
Answers.com 31 Jan. 2006.
Source

Taboo's Meditations on "Happy Endings" by Margaret Atwood.
Good Bones and Simple Murders, by Margaret Atwood

After writing "Do You Know a Way When You See One?" I received several comments in response to my meditations on Ernest Hemingway's suicide that went as follows: Cut him some slack; Everyone dies so don't let the manner of his death distract you from his life.

I could meditate for hours on why I love the writings of Ernest Hemingway--in this sense of respecting a man's life rather than dwelling on his death, my passion for his fiction leads inevitably to a fault of my own. I find truth and justice everywhere in Hemingway's stories, and I tend not to consider the end result of his vision.

But there is the end result. Hemingway dies--not only does he die, but he kills himself. Does his suicide affect the value, or the meaning of The Old Man and the Sea, of "Big Two-Hearted River," of "Hills Like White Elephants," or A Moveable Feast? For myself, the value remains, but the meaning cannot stay the same.

In "Happy Endings," Margaret Atwood outlines several scenarios for two characters, John and Mary. "John and Mary meet," Atwood writes. "What happens next?" ("Happy Endings").

She suggests the following for those writers who enjoy happy endings:

SCENARIO (A): "JOHN AND MARY fall in love and get married. They both have worthwhile and remunerative jobs which they find stimulating and challenging. They buy a charming house. Real estate values go up. Eventually, when they can afford live-in help, they have two children, to whom they are devoted. The children turn out well. John and Mary have a stimulating and challenging sex life and worthwhile friends. They go on fun vacations together. They retire. They both have hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging. Eventually they die. This is the end of the story" ("Happy Endings").

Not everyone likes a simple story, however. Here's a summary of her second suggestion:

SCENARIO (B): "MARY FALLS IN LOVE WITH JOHN but John doesn't fall in love with Mary. He merely uses her body for selfish pleasure and ego gratification of a tepid kind. He comes to her apartment twice a week and she cooks him dinner, you'll notice that he doesn't even consider her worth the price of a dinner out, and after he's eaten dinner he fucks her and after that he falls asleep, while she does the dishes so he won't think she's untidy [. . .]

Her friends tell her they've seen him in a restaurant with another woman, whose name is Madge. It's not even Madge that finally gets to Mary: it's the restaurant. John has never taken Mary to a restaurant . . . Mary collects all the sleeping pills and aspirins she can find, and takes them and a half a bottle of sherry. You can see what kind of a woman she is by the fact that it's not even whiskey. She leaves a note for John. She hopes he'll discover her and get her to the hospital in time and repent and then they can get married, but this fails to happen and she dies. John marries Madge and everything continues as in (A)" ("Happy Endings").

IN SCENARIO (C) John is married to Madge and together they have two kids, but falls in love with the 22 year old Mary, who sleeps with him out of pity. Mary isn't impressed at all with John; she has a thing for James, because he smokes killer doobie and rides a beast of a motorcycle. John walks in on Mary and James one day, and shoots them dead, and then kills himself. "After a suitable period of mourning," Madge marries the understanding Fred, and then proceeds exactly as in (A) "but under different names" ("Happy Endings").

SCENARIO (D): "Fred and Madge have no problems. They get along exceptionally well and are good at working out any little difficulties that may arise. But their charming house is by the seashore and one day a giant tidal wave approaches. Real estate values go down. The rest of the story is about what caused the tidal wave and how they escape from it. They do, though thousands drown, but Fred and Madge are virtuous and grateful, and continue as in (A)" ("Happy Endings").

However:

SCENARIO (E): "Yes, but Fred has a bad heart. The rest of the story is about how kind and understanding they both are until Fred dies. Then Madge devotes herself to charity work until the end of (A). If you like, it can be 'Madge,' 'cancer,' 'guilty and confused,' and 'bird watching'" ("Happy Endings").

Her point is, of course, that every story ends the same way:

"YOU'LL HAVE TO FACE IT, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don't be deluded by any other endings, they're all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality.

The only authentic ending is the one provided here:
John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.

So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with.

That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.

Now try How and Why"

("Happy Endings," from Good Bones and Simple Murders, by Margaret Atwood.)

If all endings are the same, and if all betweens (however fantastic, terrible, or beautiful) inevitably, through cause and effect, lead to the same conclusion, then perhaps Hemingway's suicide was only an ending, and not a cause for reflection. Likewise, if Atwood's understanding of endings and death is accurate, then every aspect of living must reflect, or anticipate, death.

Is there another perspective? Perhaps. One typical response is the religious response, referring in various ways to eternal life. One literary response, Tolstoy's, describes the religious response, that every ending, every moment of dying, contains the potential for transcending the imminence of death. Another literary response, Magical Realism, suggests that the reality of death cannot by eliminated, and yet belief controls the Truth of death's event.

With the possible exception of the Magical Realism, none of these refute Atwood's conclusion (or Hemingway's). But consider: if cause and effect construct the totality of Truth, then the manner in which one lives leads to a specific, unique ending. If, instead, cause and effect are outcomes of our deepest beliefs, then also must look to the way we live, the way we are living, to understand how we want to meet our end.

Hemingway believed that one true thing leads to another, and if you demand the passage of only true things, then in the end, you will have lived a true life.

He killed himself, though.

It matters. Killing himself suggests the meaning of his writing, and therefore reflects on the reasons why I love his stories. We cannot ignore the truth here, regardless of whether or not we all die. What is the value of Hemingway's stories? Knowing the manner of his death, what do these stories mean?

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Do You Know a Way When You See One, Hemingway?

(Check out The Abortion Taboo: Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" )

I'm in this way. It's like a way, sort of, when things happen over and over and you begin to suspect that this is the way things are. It's not good. But it's not really bad. Or, at least, it's not as bad as you expected "bad" to be. You're not way out there, you're not on your way; no, you're just in this way.

When it's like this, you have to begin. You have to look for some place to start and then, when you realize there isn't any place, you just, you know, start to begin. You just do it. You think of the people who had a hard time beginning and you do it the way they did it.

Hemingway started with one declarative sentence. He would write one true sentence. Later, he cut words, eliminated similes, searched for and destroyed speeches. He checked to make sure the temperature was correct. But in the beginning, before there was a beginning, he wrote one true sentence.


He killed himself, though.

When you're in a way, it's never enough just to begin. Sometimes it feels like it's worse to begin, because when you're in a way, you never finish. You can begin, but you can't finish, until the not finishing prevents you from beginning, and then you're finished before you ever begin. When it's like that, then you know you're in a way.

Sometimes you don't know you're in a way. Sometimes, you just come home from work. Or you write a story. Or you buy your girlfriend flowers. Sometimes you see a funny movie. Sometimes it's the funniest movie, and you know it will always be the funniest movie, and the most serious thing in your life will be convincing other people that it is the funniest movie ever made. Maybe you're washing dishes. Maybe you're washing dishes and then putting them in the dishwasher, because your dishwasher doesn't really wash dishes. It wets dishes, and if the dishes were already clean, they will stay that way. Perhaps you're in the bathroom now, washing your hands, and you look up in the mirror and you see something you did not expect. It's your face, certainly. You know enough to be sure of that. But still, you see something there that you had forgotten. And now, when you are remembering why it was forgotten, you realize you are in a way.

It's just a way, though. On the bad days, you forget that simple fact. It's a small fact, so small of a fact that on a bad day you don't recognize it for a fact. It's just a way. The mirror will show you a way. If you wait, it will show you another way. Often, the second way is worse than the first. Then, because of the sadness that comes, you wait some more until you see a third, a fourth, and a fifth way, and all of these ways are the same way, and they are much, much worse than the first or the second way. On the bad days, you then leave the mirror, and accept all five ways as the way. You can't believe that there will ever be another way.

On the good days, you remember to not leave the mirror until you've seen a sixth or a seventh way, or even a fifteenth way--any amount of ways that it takes for you to remember that individually, they're just ways.

Hemingway said it was a bad thing to talk about it, when things were going this way. It never pays, he thought, to talk about the way of things. None of it is true, he thought. Start with one true thing, then proceed with another true thing, until you have a lot of true things. And if you perservere, if you remain true to the true things, when you're fiinished you'll have just one thing, and it will be true.

He killed himself, though.

Truth is just a way of seeing things, I think. If you forget that, your way is going to be difficult. In a way, though, it's always going to be difficult. For better or worse, it's just the way things are.

Check out: The Abortion Taboo: Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"

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"NOSTALGIA [is] aroused by recalling images
of the carefree and neighborly years of their youth;
for, when they revisit these places, they are greatly
disappointed in their expectations."

Immanuel Kant,
Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Hinsicht

----------------

We talk about the innocence of childhood. We long for the simplicity of a sand castle, we believe in the purity of our youth. And when we deal with the adult complexities of taking responsibility for our actions and for the hurts and "crimes" of other people, we imagine the old times of our lives when we were removed from the tireless pain of "reality."

The biblical account of the Fall from Eden is a powerful metaphor. Adam and Eve, created by the pure force of Truth, created even from the stuff of Truth--they live uncomplicated existences. They live in harmony with growing trees and flowers; they clothe themselves in nothing but the same stuff of truth.

But within those unknowable boundaries of Eden, god created two Trees: the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge. Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Life; but they are told not to dare the Tree of Knowledge. Why did god plant the Tree of Knowledge at all? Does god create this temptation in order to define the Truth of freewill? Must Adam and Eve make a choice between Life and Knowledge? If Eden is a place of innocence, then what test could the Tree offer? If Adam and Eve are truly innocent while living in Eden, and all their intents innocent, then why is the tasting of Knowledge such a crime?

When they eat from the Tree of Knowledge, god exiles them from Eden, and they have no way of ever again reclaiming innocence.

We use the word nostalgia to mean a longing for a time or place that no longer exists. But when we experience nostalgia, we are longing--and the act of longing takes place now.

Right now, we yearn for something that no longer exists. Why? What condition of living now prevents us from having something we remember? This is Exile. We can no longer return. We can't go home, again. But why?

When I wrote In Memory, I tried to remember how I felt more than ten years ago when my girlfriend died. I remember feeling nothing. I remember trying hard not to pretend any feeling that didn't take me naturally. But in the act of writing, of trying to remember, I discovered I could now understand levels of feeling that, at the time, felt like nothing at all. So did I feel something then--when I believed I felt nothing at all--or is the feeling happening now?

Nostalgia is a present-time yearning for a time or place that no longer exists. Right now, we long to return to a time or place that exists only in our memory. Right now, we have a memory of something that no longer exists. But the memory is now; we remember now.

Nostalgia itself creates the memory, not a sand castle, not a playground where we used to gather when we were children. Nostalgia is a present-moment delusion, a wistful longing for something that never existed. We create the idea of innocence to prove to ourselves that we are corrupted. We lack something now, we believe. We must have lost something, we believe. But there is nothing that could be lost. We believe we have forgotten something special, something pure. But if we remember that purity, then we haven't forgotten anything.

Why do we experience nostalgia? Is this Exile? Is this the curse of freewill? But if we can't lose something like innocence, then there is no Exile. Nostalgia is the longing for something we never had, because we believe that we have lost something. We create the idea of innocence, but we also create the idea of Exile.

In the end, we are dissatisfied with ourselves. We believe we are unworthy.

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Work Cited
García Márquez, Gabriel. "The Saint." Strange Pilgrims. Trans. Edith

Grossman (Trans. Copyright García Márquez, Gabriel. New York: 1994.

(See Part I: Introduction to the Art of Writing, Part II: Rhetoric of Aristotelian Logic, Part III: Common Sense Rhetoric, Part IV: Neo-Platonic Taboo Creative Expression, Part V: Faces of the New Rhetoric)

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"Before the Law"
by Franz Kafka, from The Trial (Line Breaks Added).

"BEFORE THE LAW stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later.

'It is possible,' says the doorkeeper, 'but not at the moment.'

Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: 'If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him.'

These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter.

The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet.

The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: 'I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything.'

During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly; later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper's mind.

At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law.

Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage.

'What do you want to know now?' asks the doorkeeper; 'you are insatiable.'

'Everyone strives to reach the Law,' says the man, 'so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?'

The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: 'No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.' " --Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir (Citation) Copyright © 1971, Schocken Books.

In the end, the matter at hand is Truth. The Neo-Aristotelians, the Positivists, and the Neo-Platonists all believe in a discoverable Truth, and though each perspective requires a different journey to get there, none suggest that anything but reality exists at the end of the path.

Classical Rhetoric finds Truth through deductive reasoning, through the faculties of a rational mind. Positivist Rhetoric finds Truth by clearing the mind of contextual baggage, and objectively observing the world. Neo-Platonic Rhetoric finds Truth internally, by the intuition inspired by Self. "In each case knowledge is a commodity situated in a permanent location, a repository to which the individual goes to be enlightened" (Berlin, 264).

Is it that easy? Are the roads to Truth so well-mapped that anyone accepting the journey may arrive at an understanding of reality?

So I am reminded of Kafka's parable. The location of the Law is known to everyone. Everyone, in fact, only has their own, well-marked path to arrive unhindered at the Law. But forces prevent us from apprehending the Law. Other people? Other contexts? Our faulty senses? Our mortality?

For some reason, these perspectives demand that Truth exists, that Truth is available to any and all.

And we still don't get it.

"The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green."
--Wallace Stevens ("Blue" - 1)

James A. Berlin champions a fourth perspective he calls the New Rhetoric, or Epistemic Rhetoric. According to this New Rhetoric, Truth itself is in flux. Classical and Positivist Rhetorics tell us that the material, independent world is a fixed reality. Not so, say the Neo-Platonists, the world is in flux, but the Truth is fixed. Truth may be found inside ourselves--but never taught to anyone else.

"They said, 'You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.'"
--Wallace Stevens ("Blue" - 2)

Not so, says the New Rhetoric. Truth itself changes, always, and continuously. Truth triples itself when you read a book, and then expands exponentially when you discuss that book with a group. When one relative perspective encounters another within the span of a moment (when I write and you read, when you write and I read, when we talk, when we meet) then the moment of that relation creates Truth. That Truth didn't exist prior to our encounter. That Truth wasn't waiting for its discovery. The Truth is the dialectic that we create.

"The man replied, 'Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.'"
--Wallace Stevens ("Blue" - 3)

The pieces of this dialectic reality "are the elements that make up the communication process--writer (speaker), audience, reality, language" (Berlin, 264). To understand this, we need to see how dynamic this Truth becomes within this perspective. Because Truth exists within the moment of communication, then it inevitably changes when anyone speaks, when someone else joins us, and when someone leaves.

Communication is no longer a way to express Truth. Communication creates Truth.

The New Rhetoric believes that Truth cannot be discovered through our senses, because those experiences must be interpreted in order to have meaning.

We are the interpreters, but without sense data there is nothing to interpret.

So instead, the relationship between us and the world, the manner of that organization creates Truth.

And now, finally, I get to the point with the asking and answering of a question:

Q: What do we call that organization?
A: We call it language.

The previous three perspectives demand that Truth creates language. The New Rhetoric says the reverse: language itself pre-exists Truth. "Truth is impossible without language since it is language that embodies and generates truth" (Berlin, 265). And further to the point: "Language does not correspond to the 'real world.' It creates the 'real world' by organizing it, by determining what will be perceived and not perceived, by indicating what has meaning and what is meaningless" (Berlin, 265-266).

Trust exists in the moment of discourse, exists expressly for that discourse and that discourse alone. Each discussion contains a new Truth. Each Truth created between author, narrator, character, and audience changes with every reading, with every minute of the day.

A professor must explain this idea of dialectic, of the millions of miniscule contexts that exist within every world of fiction. Fiction is a reality of probabilities, then: it sets up the "what if" scenario over and over, always informing itself from one scenario to the next, one writing and reading to the next. Language and structure exist at the center, then, and not as the side-line camera, or as a vehicle from one place to the next, or as a lie detector test. Language remembers everything that has gone before, but always in a new way.

Therefore, we teach writing and we write ourselves for the same reason: to create Truth.

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Additional Works Cited (See: Previously Cited Work)
Kafka, Franz. "Before the Law." The Trial. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Schocken, 1974

Stevens, Wallace. "Man with a Blue Guitar." Source: Link.

Teaching the Art of Writing: Part IV
Creative Expression: Neo-Platonic Shadows

(See Part I: Introduction to the Art of Writing, Part II: Rhetoric of Aristotelian Logic, Part III: Common Sense Rhetoric, Part IV: Neo-Platonic Taboo Creative Expression)

The perspective of both the Neo-Aristotelians and the Positivists demands that reality, the independent, exterior world, has a knowable, objective existence. Our senses record information from the material world, and our observations are True; we can express observable Truth to other people.

Neo-Platonists--the Expressionists--have a considerably different perspective, a taboo perspective, in fact, from that of the Neo-Aristotelians and Positivists. The American Transcendentalists, such as Thoreau and Emerson, represent an expressionist period of rhetoric whose "ultimate source is to be found in Plato" (Berlin, 261). In the Platonic universe, the external, material world is always changing. The world is unreliable. The images that we see, the scents that we smell, even the impression of rocks below our feet that we depend on to walk--every sensory experience suffers the taint of uncertainty. We cannot truly experience the external world, and that renders both inductive and deductive logic useless--even taboo.

We can yet discover Truth; but the discovery comes from the birth of an internal vision that transcends our sensory vision. A sudden inspiration, an epiphany occurs, and then we know. We cannot deduce Truth from other Truths, as Aristotle argued, we cannot test a theory of Truth by observing our world, as common sense may suggest, because what we experience of external reality is nothing but a faulty impression of something we either cannot see, or cannot track as it endlessly changes. Instead, we intuit the existence of external Truth from the intuition of internal truth. Therefore, what we "realize" transcends the bits of the world we think we see.

After some meditation on this idea, you might begin to see a signifcant problem. If we can discover Truth only within ourselves, if we can know reality only through a source independent of our senses, then how can we teach others the Truth we find?

We can't.

Because we can't explain Truth to other people--because what they hear is not what is said--then language must have a different purpose. "Language can only deal with the realm of error" (Berlin, 262) and act as an exercise, as a preparation for meditation. Communication itself resembles the dialectic, a dialogue where two honest individuals will each discuss his own private vision, while the other helps the other uncover errors in thought. In Platonic rhetoric, an error only signifies an untruth.

Suppose I am discussing my vision with you, and I say:

I bequeath myself to the cement to grow from the water-lily I love,
If you want me again look for me inside your jockey straps.

You do not, and cannot, know my vision of Truth. Still, your care for me, and the honesty of your intent, moves you to ask me why the water-lily I love so much must be found in cement, and why you must seek me out inside the confines of your jockey straps. You attempt to elicit my understanding of what I've written. I consider whether jockey straps have become my way of hiding from a taboo subject. And at last I might say:

"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles."
--Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself"
Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass

No, you still do not really understand, but you see that something has been resolved. As for myself, I have uncovered an error, a side-stepping of a personal taboo: an untruth.

 

The expressionist professor of writing must accept that he cannot teach writing. MFA programs world-wide must never let this irony slip until the check is in the bank: a writer may learn to write, but a teach cannot teach a writer how to write. What good are these programs then? What is the point of aspiring to teach the art of writing?

 

In order for this expressionist to teach rhetoric, he must accept that writing is purely personal. Writing is the art of discovering for yourself what Truth means. Language and writing cannot focus on description, as Common Sense suggests. The popular Rule #1 of MFA regimes reads "SHOW! DON'T TELL!" but the opposite must suffice for the expressionist. We cannot show. Writing instead must tell, it must create analogies and metaphors: We are stuck within the shadow of Plato's Cave, as if reality were an untouchable taboo and we had no insight to see past the taboo label.

 

Such metaphors inspire a dialogue, and in a sense, this is what the expressionist must teach. He creates metaphoric models to represent what it means to write, and from the inside to the out, the writer must uncover the taboo, the untruth of his assumptions.

 

But no MFA program can openly admit such a limitation. To admit that a writer can learn to write but a program cannot teach, is to confess the heist. Would Thoreau have discovered his Truth without Emerson? Don't ask your MFA professor to answer; that would be a violation of the MFA contract.

 

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Once again, I've killed another thread. People post articles, and, while I rarely comment, when I do, I like to offer honest, meditative responses that show why an article grasped my attention so vigorously. For myself, I find that I have a strong need to discuss ideas of belief, spirituality, philosophy--ideas about what it means to be.

I'm not sure the blog world needs my blather, and I'm fairly sure that no one wants me to drop the life-long load of my inner journeys upon their blog doors. But I'm convinced that if something is worth saying, or worth a response, then it is worth what ever time and thought it requires. Here are two, joined thoughts I had, and while I expect no response on those threads (we always more posts, more comments, more recognition! Nothing that slows our pace toward blog immortality, please!), still, I am not done thinking these thoughts. I still need them.

These thoughts are my response to a recent tBLOG post, an article wondering about the miracle of a single leaf--and the sin of omission, of not having an awareness, until now.

Thought #1: Suppose you suddenly become "aware" of a leaf.

How old are you now? After all these years of knowing that leaves exist, you are now considering the value of a single leaf.

Why now? You believe that god thanklessly produces leaves, among many miracles, each leaf as special and miraculous as the others. But now you recognize a leaf--perhaps before you were mesmerized by the amazement of being alive, or the beauty and power of mountains, or the sea, and the simple leaf fell below your radar of experience.

Suppose (as I suspect you believe) that god is separate from you, that god is a Being who creates such miracles without your knowledge, your awareness, or your participation. Such a god has the power to do things that you cannot. Such a god doesn't ask for you to do things that you cannot--in fact, such a god tends toward anger (biblically speaking) when you try to do things reserved by the province of god. So why do you assume that meditation on the miracle of a leaf now reveals your old habit of sin?

This wasn't the first time you have expressed your love for god. If your job is to have faith, perhaps to show your deepest thanks, then noticing this small leaf is another step, another heart-felt, imperfect way of showing thanks, of having faith. If you believe in such things, then your limitation is nothing but the condition of your humanity. Christians believe (I think) that a sacrifice was necessary--a sacrifice that humanity was incapable of making for itself. So the sacrifice was made, and your faith is now your fated task.

My own belief system revolves around a different perspective.

I believe in belief. If I believe something (in the most profound sense of the word belief) then that belief is the Creation. My truest beliefs create the world.

Since day one, humanity has struggled with finding a way to communicate with everything external to itself. A man tries to establish a relationship with what he sees, hears, tastes, smells, and touches. It feels real; it looks real. Is it real? Why do I see differently than the way you see? Why does someone who lives before Copernicus KNOW that the world is flat, that it is the center of the universe? Why does a post-enlightenment human being KNOW that the world is round ("like an orange," to quote Jose Arcadio Buendia)?

What does it mean to KNOW something that isn't real?

From the confusion of knowledge, I intuit two things:

One: knowledge is subjective;
Two: knowledge has power over reality.

Why bring this up here? Because I always wonder at moments such as the one you described. If the leaf is a true miracle, why have you (we) suddenly discovered its worth now? And why do you (we) need to believe that we must make up for, or at least recognize, the sin of our previous ignorance?

What I believe is this: that leaf never existed before your (our) moment. It came to you at the moment that you needed it, and not before.

I think this is the heart of creation, of faith, and of miracle. If any sin exists anywhere on life, then it is that we are not aware of how intimately and completely we create our world.

I'm not talking about pantheism (which, among other ideas, suggests that god is in all things); I'm not talking about buddhism (which, among other ideas, suggests that the external world, and for the most part the internal world, is an illusion, or cannot be seen correctly).

What I'm talking about is who we are, why things happen and when, and what it means to love and to believe. Many philosophers have said that desire controls reason, that desire controls what our senses tell us. But this doesn't go far enough--this absolves us of responsibility. Again, I'm not talking about sin, I'm not talking about evil. You need love, you need belief and wonder: you discover a leaf. You need to feel guilty, you need to feel powerless: you discover a new sin.

It's a circle, and if people want to change (myself always included) one needs to meditate on why beauty makes us feel incomplete. ***

Thought #2: I believe that your concern with saving other people is misplaced.

Your "job" is not to save people. Your job is not even to save yourself.

You seem to be saying that you believe in Christ.

You seem to be saying that by believing in Christ and (I assume) his sacrifice, you have saved yourself.

That is as it may be. It isn't my job to say otherwise, and I would never want to convince you otherwise. My own beliefs tell me that if you believe in such things, if you TRULY believe them, then the power of all things right and real will go with you.

But if Christ represents a sacrifice made that you couldn't make for yourself, even to alleviate the curse of your human condition--and that sacrifice is subsumed by the grace of god--then it isn't YOU who has saved yourself. If your god wants your faith in that sacrifice, then it is god's grace that has saved you, and never your own grace.

If any of my assumptions about your faith are true, then you must also believe that you were never capable of saving yourself. You aren't capable now. You will never be capable. If your human condition prevents you from saving yourself, then it surely prevents you from saving someone else.

This business of saving other people is dangerous--not only to other people, but to yourself, as well. If your christ thought you could save other people, then his sacrifice would never have been necessary.

Would your christ want you to believe that you can save others? Would you want others to have faith in you? Wouldn't you rather have them place their faith in your christ?

If you believe--if your faith is true--then you must give up your self-importance, and instead concern yourself with the grace that has been given you through no inherent worth of your own. I'm not trying to be insulting. I'm not scoffing at your faith. I'm trying to understand: the grace you believe in is a gift from god, rather than a quality of your own.

For my part, as I said in my earlier comment, I believe that belief itself makes the world. You believe that others have not been saved, that you have some ability to control other people's eternal life. I believe that your concern with saving others is a strange way of proving your faith to yourself.

Many people throughout the years felt that it was their job to correct other people's beliefs. Many people thought they knew when other people were damned--were unworthy in the eyes of god.

Such was the inquisition. Such was the holocaust. Such was genocide after genocide, jihad after jihad, terrorist act after act, invasion after invasion.

I suspect that whatever god you think you believe in has no truck with such "conversions". Isn't it said that "he who is without sin . . . .?" Isn't it believed by many that all the pomp of the Roman church can be found in, if not surpassed by (as perhaps Graceshaker discovered in an encounter with beauty) the meditation upon a simple, lowly leaf?

If such truths exist, then that ability to meditate on the most simple of beauties is the only grace that has been given.***

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Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.

Teaching the Art of Writing: Part III
Common Sense: Pop Theory

(See Part I: Introduction to the Art of Writing, Part II: Aristotelian Logic, Part III: Common Sense)

The Neo-Aristotelian perspective depends upon the relationship between an independent, material reality and its Observer. We see, hear, smell, taste, and touch reality—we experience reality—and our minds are well-suited to interpret this sensory data into Truth. Reality is knowable. We can deduce Truth from experience, and rhetoric is the art of persuading an audience to believe in Truth.

Similarly, the Positivists, or Current Traditionalists, demand that the material world exists, and that “all knowledge is founded on the simple correspondence between sense impressions and the faculties of the mind” (Berlin, 259).

While these terms of existence resemble those of the Neo-Aristotelians, Positivist epistemology came as something of a revolutionary break. The movement dominating the related study of knowledge is known as Common Sense Realism, and it “denies the value of the deductive method—syllogistic reasoning—in arriving at knowledge” (259). Though Thomas Reid’s world is still as rational as it was for Aristotle, only common sense and the logic of induction uncovers Truth—not the logic of the deductive old-school.

With induction, we’re talking about the scientific or experimental method. Observing and testing the world brings forth Truth, and “the world readily surrenders its meaning to anyone who observes it properly, and no operation of the mind—logical or otherwise—is needed to arrive at truth” (260).

Common Sense Realism stems from various sources—many of them responses to Bishop George Berkeley’s subjective idealism, which declared that there is no existence of matter independent of perception. The famous Common Sense refutation of Berkeley’s idealism comes from Dr. Samuel Johnson, who, the story goes, went outside, took off his shoe, and kicked a large boulder.

“Thus I refute Bishop Berkeley!” Johnson declared.

Rhetoric, then, “becomes the study of all forms of communication: scientific, philosophical, historical, political, legal, and even poetic” (260). All truth exists outside of communication, and yet rhetoric is the study of communicating everything. While modes of rhetoric are split into several categories, “college writing courses, on the other hand, are to focus on discourse that appeals to the understanding [. . .]. It is significant, moreover, that college rhetoric is concerned solely with the communication of truth that is certain and empirically verifiable” (261).

In modern day universities, Positivist perspective dominates. This is the popular, Common Sense tradition taught to students of writing. Communicating truth— “empirically verifiable” truth—depends on freeing yourself completely from all context. Again, at the core, eliminating all context and observing the observable world is induction.

Forget everything you know about history. Forget everything you know about culture and society. Put yourself in an objective state of mind and your observations of the world will give you the words to explain reality to your audience.

Describe a brick. Describe a tree. Describe the chronological events of the civil war. The Positivist professor of writing teaches students, not to persuade an audience, but to describe something to an audience.

Does this method appeal to you? Is this what the typical, eager young writer expects to learn from a writing program?

TaBoo Tenente
Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua P. Suchman.

Teaching the Art of Writing: Part II
Pieces of Reality: Aristotelian Logic

(See Part I: Introduction to the Art of Writing, Part II: Aristotelian Logic, Part III: Common Sense)

If teaching someone to write requires us to understand how we understand reality, as James A. Berlin suggests, we have to accept that each element of reality has a perspective. This study of how is called epistemology, the study of the nature of knowledge itself. What do we know, and how do we know?

In relation to writing, and the teaching of writing, Berlin says “rhetorical theories differ from each other in the way writer, reality, audience, and language are conceived—both as separate units and the way the units relate to each other” (Berlin, 256). He says that knowing reality concerns the relationship between four elements: the individual (the writer), reality (the “objective” universe), humanity (the audience of the writer), and language (how we communicate).

Berlin’s essay discusses the four general schools of thought (Neo-Aristotelians, Positivists, Neo-Platonists, and New Rhetoricians), epistemologically speaking, that more or less compose the entirety of rhetorical theory. Each of these four schools understands the significance of the four elements of knowing reality in a different way.

The first of the schools he describes is the Neo-Aristotelian, or Classicist perspective. Aristotelians believe that the material world exists in an objective dimension; that it exists independently of the Observer, the individual who “experiences” the world. Aristotelians believe that the world is knowable, through our senses, to a rational being. These sense impressions mean nothing until our minds exercise the human faculty of syllogistic reasoning.

Syllogistic reasoning, or Aristotelian deductive logic, is easy to grasp on its surface level. You can look to any example to see what I mean:

All men are human beings.
All human beings are mortal.
All men are mortal.

Syllogistic reasoning involves the making of propositions. Within Aristotelian thinking, a proposition is not a hypothesis, not a statement needing to be tested. A proposition is a statement describing the relationship between two terms. A term is a part of speech representing a thing (a man, a human being, a mortal) that has meaning, but no truth or falsity in and of itself. The description of that thing is the predicate; therefore, as above in the first proposition, “all men” is the subject while “are human beings” is the predicate, in this case affirming the second term (human beings) of the first (all men). The syllogism in this example is the logical step taken that allows the third proposition (all men are mortal) to be deduced from the first two propositions.

Aristotelian reality, from its own perspective, is relatively simple. The necessary function of reason—and the rules of reason determined by logic—are inherent in the structure of mind and universe. The mind knows the universe.

The Neo-Aristotelian school teaches rhetoric in order to enable a speaker or writer “to find the means necessary to persuade the audience of the truth” (258). This rhetoric teaches three inventional devices (rational, emotional, and ethical) such that the writer may discover his argument, and his audience is subsequently persuaded by the truth.

A writer uses the rational device to explain how he discovered the truth; he uses both the emotional and ethical devices to throw his own identity into an appealing light—so his audience will hear and understand the truth.

So, a professor belonging to the Neo-Aristotelian school must believe that the material world exists independently of the writer; that an individual may understand this reality by deducing truth from the data collected by his senses; and that the writer may communicate the truth to an audience by presenting logic through the three devices.

Simple.

Anyone see a problem?

TaBoo Tenente
Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua P. Suchman.

Part I: Teaching the Art of Writing
Introduction

(See Part I: Introduction to the Art of Writing, Part II: Aristotelian Logic, Part III: Common Sense)

In the midst of numerous enjoyable, yet inevitably expensive and impractical literature and workshop courses offered by my MFA program, only one course (help me!) suggests a concrete, potentially useful benefit. I shit you not. In some ways, in fact, this class represents the sum of everything vocationally productive, provided through attendance at any MFA writing program, anywhere, ever.

Teaching Freshman Writing (TFW) is the elective course of which I am speaking—elective, at least, in the sense that no one forces me to take it; taking this course is not prerequisite to receiving a degree. But what else can a writer do? Although teaching and writing aren’t soul mates, academia is conducive to writing; professors are encouraged and rewarded for writing (for publishing). Successful completion of TFW allows me to apply for a part-time faculty position in the undergraduate program, a limited post earning me the dubious honor of teaching college freshman how to write.

There is a paradox involved that I expect other aspiring writers will appreciate: each and every writer wishes (desires, prays, needs) to believe that we have a gift, the unique gift of expression; meanwhile, we wish (desire, pray, need) to believe that we have the capacity for learning to use our gift, well enough to achieve our literary goals.

Can you teach someone how to write? Forget about the writing of fiction, for the moment. Can you teach someone how to master the art of composition? What methods are there, beyond the obvious?

John Gardner, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, and endless others—perhaps all others—have said, each in the writer’s own way, that the only way to learn how to write is this: to write.

At the moment, I’m reading “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories,” an essay written by James A. Berlin. “To teach writing,” he says, “is to argue for a version of reality, and the best way of knowing and communicating it” (256). I have a hankering to talk about that one, to break it down, but let’s hold off for a sec. Right now, think about what this suggests about teaching others to write:

In order to teach composition, you must have a metaphysically sound faith in a cosmology—an understanding of the universe itself—as well as a concrete argument for expressing that philosophy.

Why? What does one have to do with the other?

Work Cited
Berlin, James A. "Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories." Cross-Talk in
Comp Theory: A Reader. Ed. Victor Villanueva. NCTE: Urbana, 2003

TaBoo Tenente

Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua P. Suchman

Who has the best blog?  What makes a good blog?  Why do we blog?  After the blather, I'm posting four tBLOG sites that have caught my attention over the course of the last week.

As mentioned in my previous article about team work, I have spent a lot of my usual blog-venting time working together with other tBLOG cohorts on a single project, the Building a "Build a Blog" Blog Project.

That project involves not only learning to get along with other ornery, unscrupulous men, not only learning what technology it takes to build a blog, but also learning about some of the aesthetic basics that, when balanced correctly, produce both a visually pleasing and intellectually stimulating blog.

The other Stone Blog members have more of an aptitude for web development than I do; on the other hand, I dig my heels when it comes to rhetoric, while those Andie MacDowell-lovers wouldn't know style or (especially) wit if Bill Murray said to them, "some people like blood sausage, too, you know."

My Stone Blogs assignment is to produce a research article for Stone Blogs about the relationship between (rhetorical) writing, subject material, and successful blog practices.  In the meantime, I thought I would peruse some of tBLOG's own stars.  I make the rounds on a small handful of local blog products, but perhaps there might be other kernals worth excavating for the chaff.

So here's my short list (my cohorts excluded, so no huffing and puffing, tenderhearted fatheads) presented in no significant order:

1. Jesus Reporting is Surrogate's work, a diligent, enduring blog top-filled with rational, intelligent work presented in unique, thoughtful ways.  The blog title refers to Surrogate's original format presentation, where each article began with the ironic "Jesus reporting here" and proceded to provide a thinker's perspective on many topics--often religion.
2. My Massive Thighs, a ThunderThighs production, is a sensory collage of font, photo, and larger-than-life article posts.  Her blog title wins the gold metal, co-opting a lot of slur and suggestive stereotype, while throwing wit back in your face for laughing.  She keeps her posts brief, inevitably funny, and (perhaps most impressive of all) uniquely interesting every time.
3. Justin's Tech Blog took me by surprise yesterday, when the stranger JustinB posted some responses at our Blog Forum.  I went to investigate for Stone Blogs, and discovered a very attractive blog page solution to the sudden removal of tBLOG's custom HTML access.  JustinB cleverly manipulated the basic template to produce an exceptional, professional appearance.  And his articles are packed with valuable research.  Useful research--separating his type of blogging from, say, my type of blogging.
   
4. A Reading Journal, written by Autumn Snow, is a blog I stumbled across by accident.  Looking for generic "praise-up" articles to rant about, a slip of the mouse clicker took me to her site.  Without any arrogant rhetoric (which sticks like drying snot to the walls of my blog), any judgmental declarations, any tBLOG fanfare at all, Autumn Snow has been writing soul-searching, thoughtful articles about books and movies, while generously offering her own considerations and feelings as they rise to the surface of her thoughts.  If you've missed her blog, do yourself a favor and correct the problem now.

Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.

When tBLOG went shopping and came back with the present wardrobe, the format of my old blog went kaputski. No matter: as you can see, my new site has monkeys everywhere, which I consider to be a considerable improvement--and so should you.

Most bloggers re-vamped a bit, though some bloggers de-vamped by way of abdicating the luxurious blog life style for the more simple and peaceful existence of ranting and raving against the tBLOG establishment.

A few fat-heads, myself included, were struggling with the new tweaks and templates. We decided to join our mediocre forces together to form the Building the "Build a Blog" Blog, mostly because we assumed our pathetic blogging struggles were worth a laugh to the public at-large.

To some extent, the project has been a success. We've received some comments, some tmail encouragement, and perhaps most significantly, we've learned a buttload about playing with styles and HTML code. 'Course, that still brings our grand web-developer's IQ total to 75 (that's four of us added together--though I didn't figure my own score into the mix because the effort wouldn't affect the result significantly).

Team work is the name of that game. Team developing. Team blogging. Team not fighting. A strange business, is this team work thing. I, for one, am not any wiser for the effort, and, with regard to the rest of the crew, may whatever quantum force or spiritual incarnation they interpret (through faulty-but-necessary sensory impressions) to be running this cosmic joint have mercy on whatever subjective illusion of Self to which they pathetically cling.

Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.

I popped onto tBLOG today in order to give a tweak or two to the new TaBoo Tenente Ezine here, to have a peek at few re-vamped blogs, and to revisit the different article threads I'd ruined with my blather.  This response of mine killed an entire conversation:

'Unborn babies.'  You know, when a rational person reads the words "unborn baby" without any other context, we assume we are reading about a fetus. But I'm not sure what you mean here at all. Are you referring to a fetus, or are you referring to the individual sperm that might be prevented from joining forces with an unfertilized egg?

Here's the reason I don't understand: you say you are pro-life, Dorcas, which I understand to mean that you are actually anti-abortion; but it also seems that you are anti-condom, pill, IUD, anti-prevention to the nth extent.

In which case, 'unborn babies' refers not only to the fetus, but to all the sperm, all the unfertilized eggs that never are happily joined by the aforementioned sperm, the spinster eggs that pass with the moon every month . . . .

Who speaks for those unborn babies? Will no one give them a voice?

So be it. It will have to be me, TaBoo Tenente, with a picket sign and maybe a good jingle.

So I go, ever onward TaBoo soldier, down to the convenience store to protest the evil of sanitary napkins; thus I demonstrate my solidarity with the unstoried, monthly innocent victims of menstruation.

Any one else in?"

Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 TaBoo Tenente Ezine. All rights reserved.
 

Pioneering Moon Mountain

A shallow breeze whispers through the night air along the foothills of the Serra de Sintra. John and I drink from a two-Euro bottle of full-blooded Ramisco wine, share a supper of cigarettes and pickles, and, under the raucous scrutiny of a small crowd, begin a second game of chess on the sidewalk outside of the train station. Meanwhile, João attempts to recruit a gathering of young squatters to break us in to the tunnels beneath the Monastery dos Capuchos.

John and I eat with the shameless gusto of ravenous scavengers—one vegetarian scavenger and one carnivorous scavenger though we are, and forced to compromise on queijada—the local cheesecake—and pickles. Portuguese pickles are entirely superior to the classic kosher dill, and each pickle glass holds a variety of surprises. We crowd into the jar, at first thrusting and stabbing with our short-handle knives, then swirling our tobacco-soiled fingers about in the murky brine as we hunt for remaining scraps of cucumber, carrot, and the prize morsels of red pepper.

João returns with seven squatters. “No one will go. No one ever goes anymore. This man was eaten by a snake,” he says, indicating a grimy, milky-eyed boy no older than eighteen. Impressed, I open another bottle of wine and offer him the first sip.

“I’m Owen, from London,” he says. “These lot are local. They know Sintra rather well and let me squat with them these last two months. We’re climbing Moon Mountain; if you like you can come.”

João grimaces. “It is a very good place, but there are dogs and police with guns. More dangerous than the tunnels. We will not go. Sintra has good bars and you will meet Portuguese women. Portuguese women are also dangerous.”

In the few weeks of our travels we have already encountered the peculiar danger of Portuguese women. Dragging João along, we follow the squatters.

The squatters are lean from hard living and unhindered by hiking packs; they set a brisk pace from the station. We hug the edges of a winding, lamp-lit road for only fifteen minutes before one of the squatters taps my shoulder and points to the sky and the shroud of Moon Mountain looms like a deeper darkness of shadow inside the night.

For the next three hours no one speaks as we break a trail directly up the mountainside, cutting through brambles, splashing in hidden, icy streams, climbing over boulders and chest-high timber, groping blind in the dark, guided only by the sounds of those in front of us.

We halt twice: once when we hear the barking of several dogs; and then again when two flashlights split the darkness below. During the second break John lights a cigarette, and someone grasps his arm and whispers urgently. John stubs out the cigarette. Then we wait.

Suddenly we’re in motion and all thoughts of stealth are left in the mud as everyone scrambles up the hill. I have to crawl sometimes, but mostly I’m jerking my boots high to free them from oozing mud—my thighs and elbows are caked with the sludge.

Then at last we summit, and over a wide granite shelf we can suddenly see for miles. Above us there are stars and moon; below, a long plain of scattered lights. The squatters crow with joy. I throw down my pack and flop down next to John, wheezing in, wheezing out of consciousness.

Someone is dancing. Someone says something once or twice. John responds, “Le sentado,” which barely means anything in any language. We’ve acquired a pathetic habit of responding with intentionally corrupted Spanish—believing for some reason that speaking Spanish incorrectly will make things easier for the Portuguese than speaking Spanish correctly.

The squatter laughs. Finally, John laughs. I laugh and soon we light cigarettes and open wine—each drinking from his own bottle and with a third to share with our new friends—and before long we are telling jokes that no one understands—even Owen from London—and we remember how lucky and free we are, traveling recklessly and free, and I remember how terrible and wonderful that freedom was the first time I traveled many years ago. I offer my silent, fervent thanks to the Mountain.

The party retreats to a secluded, sheltered nook within a swaying copse of black skeletal pine. The squatters fill their mouths with spirits and breathe clouds of fire. Three of the squatters are women, soon naked, holding hands and dancing in plump writhing circles to beating drums while their fellows holler and clap. John and I are thankful for many things. And even the young women with shadows of breasts swaying both soft and swift like projections of promise on the back drop of a moistened forest—even the women cannot distract me from my moment, from something deep and almost, but not quite, forgotten.

But before dawn, we are too cold to for thankfulness, and a squatter named Gonzalo offers to guide João and his Americans back to Sintra. Even though the risk of being caught has disappeared, descending proves much more perilous than the ascent. There are high rock shelves that were easy to climb, but without a flat base at the bottom we cannot trust ourselves for balance. Many times we’re forced to slide down the trunks of trees as if they were poles rather than gnarled, bristled chunks of bark.

We do not see the sun when it rises behind the mountain, but darkness dries into the ashen light of morning, and, for the first time, we realize, we are able to see the mountain at last.

Both climbing and descending, several times we cut across a single, spiraling road that sections Moon Mountain into several tiers. But the road had been hidden by the dark. And we discover that many of the trees in the highest places are ancient, transplanted Redwoods. Then, about halfway down, we enter a denuded meadow, littered with the unusable debris of felled lumber.

Gonzalo stops for a moment and we survey a field of little white tubes. There are tubes everywhere, row upon row of Plexiglas cylinders containing new-starts, twelve-inch substitute saplings--like we've entered the nightmarish future of graveyards.

As I prepare to resume our trek, I see that Gonzalo is crying. At first he will not speak; then he speaks in a rush of feeling and João explains that one year earlier, the entire mountain changed from public to private ownership. Speculators from Japan and the United States had purchased most of the land. The squatter is losing his forest. He is tired. He talks about suicide but he is too afraid. After many meditations and prayers he knows he has no means to make things right. He hates the world. He is afraid to die. There is nothing he can do.

There is a fountain at the bottom of the mountain. Two scowling, grey-haired ladies are collecting water with two identical blue jugs, and I am surprised when they smile. They offer us a drink. My throat is filled with dust and restraint and the clean purity of the water stings as it goes down, as if to say, you know nothing of purity, you know nothing of clean intent.

Above the lip of the water jug, I watch Gonzalo as I drink. He is staring at my shoes.


Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.
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