A friend I don’t see often came to visit yesterday. We sat in the kitchen, drank coffee, smoked, and talked about our kids, about religion, and about art. I don’t really like to talk about my kids. If they’re doing well, it sounds like you’re bragging, and if they’re not doing well, that’s their business, isn’t it? I like my children, and I think I have good relationships with them, but their lives are theirs, and I feel only they have the right to describe their lives.
Everyone seems to be talking about religion these days. The newspapers were full of it this morning, with Charles Krauthammer ranting about radical judges who refuse to cram Christianity down our throats and Cal Thomas claiming that the evil secular humanists are trying to oppress those poor Bible believing thumpers by denying them the right to foist their views on everyone in the schools and courts. Last night, Bill Maher made a feeble attempt to prove that the religious right is running the Republican Party. And the papers have full of speculation about what kind of Pope Benedict Ratzinger will be and what direction he will lead the Catholic Church.
Most of my friends are liberal New-Agers, which isn’t much better. They decorate their homes with dream catchers and ionically charged crystals, pay $200 to get their chakras aligned and their karma cleansed. Why are people such suckers? And why do they feel the need to seek validation from some kind of moral authority. There is no moral authority. Morality is whatever reasonable people agree it is. God, if such a being exists, is not human, has no body, fills the entire universe, and is largely indifferent to our petitions. God is too busy keeping the planets spinning to care what people are doing to earn an enjoyable afterlife.
Art is my religion, if I had to name one at all. And nature. Anything that’s beautiful, that elevates me above my routine existence, that opens my eyes, that makes me think and wonder. That’s the best that can be expected.
What’s the point of having a blog if you don’t post anything on it? When I started this blog, I was hoping that having a place to publish my writing would motivate me to write more often. I have been motivated to write more, but not for the blog. I’ve been doing most of my writing in a small notebook I carry with me everywhere. And most of what I write there has been too personal to put in a public space. And I’m not going to go into a long discussion about the nature of each kind of writing, supplemented by an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of each. That topic has been exhausted elsewhere.
What is interesting to me is the kind of writing I tend to do in different places. I have a nice little home office that my husband built for me when he put an addition onto the back of our too-small-for-two-adults-and-three-teenagers house. I do most of my on-the-computer writing there, mostly class assignments, emails, and a couple of articles for various publications. I post to discussion boards occasionally, and shoot off a letter to the editor of our local paper. When I grade papers for my on-campus classes, I move to the kitchen table and write long formative comments at the end of their essays. This shift from office to kitchen has an effect on my feelings which then affects my thoughts, which in turn affects the kind of writing I do as well my voice and tone. I construct a different kind of self in the kitchen, a more comfortable, personal self.
I’ve been keeping a private journal for about 30 years, I guess. Lately I’ve been using a Moleskine notebook. I admit I bought my first Moleskine because of the blurb about how Hemingway and Matisse used them, but also because I liked the size (fits right into my hand), the texture (feels like leather), the construction (sewn pages), and even the smell. I’m now on my fourth notebook and will probably continue using them for as long as I can pick up a pen or pencil. I carry the notebook around in my purse and pull it out in restaurants and coffee houses to jot down whatever I’m thinking at the time. What I find puzzling and/or ironic is that I do most of my public writing in a private place, and my private writing in public places. I wonder why that is.
