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Thoughts on grief and shopping

In an uncanny, almost freakish coincidence, our cat Bella, littermate to the late lamented Zee, has died of the same illness (lymphoma), almost exactly one year later, i.e., during the recent holidays, which are already horrible by nearly all measures, at least for me.

So, first off: Rest well, beloved Bella. We miss you.

I've just noticed that I am coping with my devastation in a way that replicates the premise of my first novel, Bigfoot and the Baby. That is: we shop because we grieve. I suspect I've bought more unneeded items for myself in the past 24 hours than I did all last year. And, sad to say, these purchases somehow make me feel better, if only temporarily.

Notions of "filling the void" come to mind, but seem inadequate, as an explanation. Perhaps there's an illusion of control--I find something I want, I buy it, I own it--that eludes us when a loved one is ill or dying. When we shop, we complete a concrete transaction with a gratifying result. There's no helpless guessing what might happen if we make one choice or the other; and if we don't like what we bought after all, we can usually return it (or the consequences of our mistake are usually minimal).

But the grief we feel may be more inchoate, which was an underlying theme of Bigfoot. Though I'm not religious, I believe Judaism and Christianity capture this feeling well with the story of the Fall. Our lives are rooted in a tremendous sense of loss, of reaching for that paradise we can never quite envision, let alone regain. Every actual loss resonates with that fundamental condition, making grief seem both bottomless and holy.

What evolutionary advantage this might give us, I can't really say. But it does give a real boost to consumer capitalism.

Some cheery thoughts on grief and horror for the new year

I tend not to have very high expectations for the holidays, but this past season was an especially large suckburger with extra moldy cheese. Our cat died rather suddenly, and although the suddenness has an upside (she was probably in for a fair degree of lingering misery), the event plunged us into grief. Which, I'm now reminded, is a feeling not quite like any other ... except, possibly, for horror.

When my father died nearly ten years ago, I had a very strong urge to watch horror movies. Not slasher-type, gory movies, but creepy, terrifying ones (I remember finding The Others especially satisfying). Normally I don't seek out horror, so this was a strange experience.

I haven't had such a strong urge on this occasion, but I have come to think that horror and grief are quite close. There's the same helplessness in the face of suffering and death. The same shivering emptiness. The shock, even when the death is expected. So I suppose that getting through the horror movie, or book, is sort of practice for getting through the grief: a miniature version of the longer, harder process, which contains a promise that you will survive.


Zee Hebert, 2002(?)-2015

Joseph Welch: Have you no sense of decency, sir?

Now might be a good time to re-watch this.

Giving your characters an inner life

This lovely piece about James Gandolfini got me thinking about literary characters and what makes them seem real to us. My former students know I've been grinding this ax a long time. But this is another way that writing fiction very much resembles acting: in both cases, you can't reveal everything there is to know about a character. Good characters (like good stories, according to Hemingway) are icebergs; much more of them exists below the surface than above. And, let's face it, that's true of actual human beings as well. That's why, in fact, fictional characters who seem to have a lot going on inside them feel more real than those whose thoughts, beliefs, and actions are always transparent and aligned.

So, keeping Gandolfini as Tony Soprano in mind as an example, here are some ways we fiction writers can make our characters more real--as opposed to, God help us, more likeable.

• Embrace contradiction. Tony was a wildly violent man who fretted over his violent tendencies, took his daughter to visit colleges, and became quite fond of a family of ducks. We all fret about certain characteristics we possess; we don't think they're quite honorable or consistent or helpful, yet we can't quite smooth ourselves out. Your characters can be the same way: an elementary school teacher who fears children, a doctor who's addicted to cocaine ... Let them be aware of these contradictions without knowing how to resolve them.
  
• Use interior monologue. The psychiatrist in The Sopranos was a device than enabled us to hear what went on inside Tony's head. In fiction, we can just write that stuff out. Where else but in fiction do we have direct access to another person's thoughts? Take advantage of that opportunity. After all, I think, therefore I am: that's how I know that I, at least, am real. Of course, you can overdo interior monologue or use it as an excuse to tell rather than show. The test is whether it reveals character, rather than explaining it.
  
• Let characters wonder what each other thinks. It's my sense (isn't it yours, too?) that we humans spend a lot of time wondering what other people think. It might be one reason why some of us read fiction--to at least have the sense that we're inside someone else's head. So a realistic fictional character would probably have this desire also--to know what her husband is really thinking about when he shrugs and says "nothing." Our common, everyday tragedy is that none of us can ever really know this for certain. In their world, your characters live this tragedy, too.
  
• Explore emotion. As Gandolfini said, let your characters really feel emotions. Those emotions can be confusing, "wrong," in conflict with one another, etc. They can explode volcanically, or the character can work hard at suppressing them, but the emotions themselves never go away.

Ray Harryhausen and writing

In the NYT obituary for legendary stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, I found myself dwelling on this statement:

“There’s a strange quality in stop-motion photography, like in ‘King Kong,’ that adds to the fantasy,” he said in 2006. “If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.” 

As a fiction writer--and reader--I've always agreed with this, without ever quite knowing why. Now I actually suspect it's because I grew up watching Harryhausen's movies, often on the big screen, in gorgeous Technicolor. The way Harryhausen's monsters moved impressed the hell out of me--at once faster and slower than humans, with starker contrasts between light and shadow. I don't remember precisely how they looked. The movement was what made them otherworldly, and therefore more real, in the sense of more plausible as monsters. Why would something from another world (or from the imagination) move as we do, and exist in precisely the same plane? The movements of Harryhausen's creatures made them seem both here and somewhere else at the same time--and that lent them real power and real magic. And as he suggests, the more realistic CG effects become, the more disappointing they become, even as we marvel at the technical achievement. The monsters really have been brought down to Earth.

That's probably not the *only* reason that I prefer a veneer of unreality in fiction. But if you're going to go ahead and create a world, why not let it shimmer and quake a little around the edges? Because you have made something. You have brought something into our world from another one--your imagination. That wonder and that strangeness, it seems to me, deserve attention.

"Show, don't tell" and hoarding

I spent the past two days purging old clothes from my closets. I hauled five bags of stuff off to Goodwill, and upon returning home, I felt ... awful. My sense is that one is supposed to feel liberated on such occasions, and also not a little holy for contributing to charity (though one is also aware that clothing donations from the first world can interfere with nascent clothes-making businesses in the third). While I kept reminding myself of how lame it is to hang onto stuff I don't wear, when others might be able to use it, when I drove away from the Goodwill container I felt almost like I was fleeing the scene of a crime I had just committed.

Yes, things are just things. And yet they are not. In the same way that in fiction, the specific, telling detail is a window into a character's psyche, things--in our consumer society, anyway--are portals to the past. To me, even the most trivial piece of clothing I heaved into the Hefty bag had some bit of memory stuck to it, along with lint and cat hair. I almost always remembered where I'd bought the thing, and what life was like at that time (I really have hung onto things far too long). If the piece of clothing was a gift, well, so much the worse. How ungrateful I felt for never wearing that jacket (even if it didn't fit, or made me look like Carmela Soprano, or both). How I felt like I was stabbing the giver in the heart, like I was tossing a kitten out of a car into the rain.

It's my guess that although I may be nuttier than many in this area, I'm not alone. (I am fortunate, too, that our condo is small enough that full-on hoarding is simply not possible.) Consumerism, I think, depends on this fear of loss, especially of the loss of memory. We buy to ward off Alzheimer's, and we give to keep others from forgetting us. Those aren't the only reasons, of course, but they come into play--maybe more so when we feel ourselves isolated, and people close to us start dying, and we start to think of how many people we've already lost track of over the course of our lives.

What will keep our memories for us, if not objects? Stories? Facebook? The Cloud? Fine, but we can't touch and see these things in the same way I could have--but didn't--wear that TV-test-pattern sweater I bought in England two-plus decades ago. You can tell stories to kids and grandkids, but if they're not connected to tangible things, those stories mutate and dissipate over generations, even if they're written down. Objects don't change, although they do decay, and their original appeal or function can become questionable.

This is where Buddhism is supposed to help, right? Impermanence, impermanence. Further: giving up clothing is nothing compared to giving up one's life, which is what Memorial Day is about. Yet Memorial Day is also about sales. It really seems like this endless circulation of stuff through our lives is really the presence (presents?) of death.

Anyway, I've moved more junk into the empty spaces in the closets, so there's lots more space in my office now. That's kind of nice.

Space colony art from the 1970s

Commissioned by NASA.

I love these for the same reason I love the NASA logo itself, the one known as "The Meatball." It's the goofy more-is-more graphic optimism of the early space age. (I don't love the alternative logo, known as "The Worm," which has fortunately been retired.)

Of course I'm biased, since my dad worked for NASA. He was at the research center now known as Glenn, formerly Lewis. They used to have "For the Benefit of All Mankind" spelled out in begonias in front of the building.

Posted without comment

An interview with David Kato, the Ugandan gay-rights activist, who was recently beaten to death with a hammer.

Two possibly related questions about dreaming

1. Do animals wake up from dreams and think, "Oh, phew, that was just a dream?" Or what?

2. Is our love for stories related, on an evolutionary level, to dreaming? John Gardner famously said fiction should produce "a vivid and continuous dream." If dreams help us organize and interpret our daily experiences, does fiction do the same thing?

I am thinking of how some dreams are more absorbing and more memorable than others. Sometimes I have dreams in which I seem to be doing real work in real time, like preparing a lecture or editing a document, and wake up frustrated that I have literally nothing to show for my labors. I have dreams in which I'm utterly frightened, and some in which I'm sad but also interested in what's going on--for instance, my dad's still alive and sort of hanging around while the rest of us go about our business. I know he's not supposed to be there, and he seems to know it too, but I'm still terribly glad to see him.

Often, as when I read novels, I don't retain the plot of the dreams for very long, only an emotional impression. But this impression can be very strong.

My point is, dreams and fiction seem absorbing in similar ways, and might fulfill similarly complex purposes for our brains. We have a little more control over what we read than what we dream, though maybe not as much control as we think. But the fact that we crave stories, and the fact that all of us dream, suggests the two experiences are deeply connected.

A Glorious Dawn

Well, this is the best thing I've seen in a very long time...

No more tree

Sometime yesterday the neighbors took out the plum tree that I've been using to measure the passage of time. Now we have a lovely, unobstructed view of the carport, and no more white blossoms in March.

Goodbye, Farrah

I realize there are more important things going on in the world today, but Farrah's passing means something to those of us of a certain age. This piece in Salon says it all, and says it beautifully.

The Cleveland Museum of Art

I'm happy to report that the new wing of the Cleveland Museum of Art is finally opening. I hope to visit it soon.

Apparently the building is actually designed to showcase the art, not overwhelm or hide it. That's all well and fine. Nevertheless, my fondest childhood memories of the museum are about the spaces--ponderous, marble, cool, with that distinct stony scent. Floors to slide on, corners to hide in. Occasionally a great burst of sunlight from overhead, as in the armor court or the atrium. Out front was a big pond with willow trees and a walking path around it, and ducks and fish in it, which we fed with white bread or crackers from the cafeteria.

The last time I wandered around that pond was almost exactly three years ago, calling friends on my cell phone to tell them my father was dying (he was at the hospital a few blocks away). It was hot; thick clouds were parting to let out a little blue sky.

RIP, Bird

This is sad. I remember Mark Fidrych. My dad and I used to really get a kick out of him.

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was one of those writers I didn't even bother envying--his talent and his energy were simply on a different plane, one I could only reach by Star Trek transporter. I never read Infinite Jest, but Brief Interviews with Hideous Men has been on my bedside table for over a year. I look to it whenever I feel trapped by the conventional short-story form. I've broken too many stories by trying to force them into Freitag's triangle. Whereas Wallace would be, like, what triangle? What the hell are you talking about? He simply blows form away, turns it inside out. His stories are all voice, and for him voice is far more than enough.

Amanda Marcotte makes the interesting point that all of us are complicit in a creative person's suicide; we feed off that person's sadness (though he was willing, more than willing, to let us do so). I'm not sure how I feel about that idea. The late and equally lamented Joe Strummer once said non-smokers should be banned from enjoying any creative work done by smokers. After all (I'm interpolating a bit), they're the ones who scorched their lungs and risked cancer as part of their creative process. It's not fair that we get to have it risk-free.

We Freeze to Please

Flying out of Cleveland in a snowstorm New Year's night, I was grateful for my father's work on de-icing technologies at NASA. A few years ago my dad was interviewed for a book on the ice tunnel at NASA's Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center. The book, We Freeze to Please, is also available as a PDF, here. On p. 70 (82 in the pdf) there's a photo of my dad in 1949, standing on top of a large ladder with a "spray system for dyed water impingement studies."

The Cleveland Indians

So I see that the Indians blew a 3-1 lead in the playoffs amid news that one of their pitchers is turning into a cow. My father would have been beside himself.

Someday I will have to write about growing up as an Indians fan. I remember going to a game on my birthday, watching the Indians pitching staff walk fourteen Detroit Tigers to the sarcastic applause of the 3000 or so fans. (The old Municipal Stadium held 80,000.) When the pitcher finally threw a strike, the crowd booed, but the catcher leaped up and pumped his fist--see, you can do it, he was saying. But that wasn't true.

Jay Fliegelman

A fond and baffled farewell to a brilliant Americanist, about whom there will still be stories.

RIP Corolla

My Corolla's engine gave out yesterday in Half Moon Bay. We decided not to pay $2000 for a new (used) engine and do what we've been talking about for several years now--donate it and get a new car. I'm finding the whole thing really heartbreaking. My dad and I bought this car together, drove out to CA in it ... I've had it 20 years, almost to the day. Of course old cars never die, they just become something else. In this case I expect it will become a teenager's rally car, since it has rear wheel drive. I've had several offers and expressions of interest from mechanics, hotel valets, and others; they'd want to put a new engine in it anyway. It was nice of it to die where we could get it off the road fairly easily. It could have been a lot worse. The Grey Ghost was always was good to me.