I’m just back from a walk to Franceschi Park. From our front porch to the parking lot of the park took 31 minutes at a reasonable pace, with only a brief stop or two to enjoy the view of the city. I had my phone but didn’t listen to music or podcasts. I’m trying to provide myself a respite from news, information, sound bites about American democracy or the situation in Ukraine or which Chelsea attacking players are said to be at odds with the manager. Enough. Poverty, injustice, cruelty, and stupidity. Same goes for you. I need a break. I worked the last three days at the Market, one day shift, two closing shifts, during which I walked nearly 40 miles and put in 24 commuting miles on my bike. Didn’t get up until eight this morning, late for me. A body needs rest. Ahead of me near the top of Garcia Road I saw a worker carrying his tool belt in his right hand and his lunch pail in his left. His body language told me he was tired after a long day. No weekend for him, just a short respite and back to it. I see that same look at the store in some of my co-workers, the guys and ladies who work in areas that are short staffed, like the meat department. More times than not, their workday goes on for twelve hours. Most of us always have one eye on the work and the other on the clock.
I’m reading a book called Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Prize winner who until recently I had never heard of. This is why I remain an unpaid book reviewer. I can’t even pretend to have read broadly or deeply enough. But this novel is so brilliant it makes my head spin. The voice telling the story is that of a master of pace, dark humor, and memory. Heavy moral and ethical subjects written about with a sly humor, and always, a knowing.
The other book I’m reading is To Govern the Globe by historian Alfred W. McCoy. It’s weighty like Chronicles, but in a much different way. McCoy’s subject is empire and world orders, and his range of analysis is the past half century of human history. Empires like that of Spain and Portugal, and later Britain, with outposts in exotic, foreign locations; wars of conquest for church and crown giving way to wars between sovereign nations that included colonization and the radical racial theory that legitimated the enslavement or murder of thousands of human beings. A world order organizes an entire age, not precisely, but as a prevailing ethos, like the Iberian idea -- backed by the Catholic Church -- that to the conqueror went the spoils, including total dominion over the conquered. Great book. British rule of the Indian subcontinent has always fascinated my imagination, the circumstances that made it possible for so few to assert control over so many for so long. I’ve heard Alfred McCoy on podcasts and seen him on Democracy Now, and he’s always concise and direct in his analysis. He has some trenchant things to say about the future of the American world order. (Spoiler alert: it’s coming to an end.) He’s worth listening to.
I put a book by Rebecca Solnit called Orwell’s Roses on my radar.
In terms of my own writing, I published one review at California Review of Books this month, and two pieces for my Medium page. I admit to getting caught up in the anxiety and anticipation of views, reads, and reaction from others, but I usually remind myself of the hundreds of things vying for our attention these days, sunup to sundown, from the latest must-have deals to what’s hot on HBO. Is it trending? How many likes? What’s the hashtag? It’s exhausting. My fiction project hit a stall, as if the breeze on the sea suddenly ceased and the sails drooped. While I was walking it occurred to me that though the story is coming clear to me, I still do not know who is telling the story. I don’t trust my own voice, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I don’t know what my voice sounds like. I think I’ve stumbled upon a structure that might connect all the scenes in my head. We’ll see. My labor of love, failure, and hopefully, learning. I try to get better at things.
As I was riding past the Old Mission the other night around 10:30, I heard the yipping of coyotes, a loud chorus that I haven’t heard in such volume in a long time. The sound echoed in the heavily wooded canyon. Nature. I’ve been working on composting, experimenting with opening the tumbler to air it out as much as possible, because it’s too wet and smells rank, a sign of excessive moisture. Composting food waste and watching its slow decomposition, then spreading it around our yard, turning it into the soil with a long-handled trowel, is very satisfying to me. From a very young age I loved gardening. There’s wisdom in it. I need to get my hands in dirt on a regular basis.
And sometimes I find I need to just be, where I am, fully present in the moment. It’s the toughest discipline.
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