There are rumors of a storm coming in, but my optimism is holding strong. This autumn sun still dazzles. I love this period of weather. The first person who helped me in professional writing was an editor, and one of the founders of Soho Press. His name was Juris Jurjevic (say Your YEA Vick) He was the man who had picked me off of the slush pile and decided to publish my first book. He had been an editor at Dial Press and he had worked with James Baldwin among others. He could be tough. He was married to a fine novelist and well known food writer named Laurie Colwin. Laurie died way too young. Back in the nineties and Juris just past on a couple of years ago. Juris had served in Vietnam and he had a very dark sensibility in literature. He wanted to put together a crime list of a literary type of crime fiction from far flung places. He liked stories you could learn something from but he also liked them gritty. Or so it seemed to me. His wife was one of the few writers I knew of who was interested in what I thought was “intelligent happiness”. She wrote a book called “Happy All The Time” which was a complex story of relationships and families. There were complexities and sorrow, but at the center was the comfort of love and devotion. In her culinary writing she venerated the warm biscuit. When I think of her now I think of laughter and warm butter melting on fresh bread. This is from her books. I only met her once.
I’m thinking about this now, because there is so much dire news. Actual news and speculations of worse things to come. So much brain power going to the purpose of predicting horrible things. Which I both appreciate and I sometimes am guilty of, appreciate because I like to feel prepared by thinking ahead, guilty because I lose sight of the goodness of others.
We don’t think of them often but there have been serious intellectuals who have made it their life’s work to understand happiness and generosity, but too ofter they are called out for being “Pollyannas”. John Maynard Keynes argued, the the extent that I understand his macro economic systems, that private markets had to be managed by the government during times of crisis, otherwise the systems would be essentially looted by the strongest elements in the market. This idea was thought of as a protection for the week. Some argue the great depression proved him wrong. That Roosevelt’s New Deal didn’t end the depression but only the War did. Others say the war spending was the “New Deal on Steroids” pumping federal dollars directly into people’s pockets on every level straight from the government. Whatever, Keynes thought about the well being for the most, and not profit for the few. This runs afoul of the singular devotion to the individual, espoused by Ayn Rand and other conservative thinkers. The freedom of the individual actor’s access to profit takes care of all society’s problems. No government meddling needed. Just take the highway signs down on the interstate let the fucking drivers figure it out.
What am I talking about? I don’t really know anything about macroeconomics. Obviously. I only promised you that we would look at the light today. Today where I am there is no smoke in the air, the sun is out and the earth is still lifting from the last glacial rebound so that no matter how much the ocean is likely to rise the land does not disappear. Right now, right here, life is good and I need to acknowledge that. the fact of mortality is still a reality still stares me in the face, the news remains grim but if I turn off the news my world will not immediately collapse. I still do not feel the need to order small arms ammunition by the pallet full. I honestly do not hate anyone within range. Disagree with and am even alarmed by…. sure, but I live on an island with mostly non threatening human beings… for the most part. I can both give and receive love and express myself freely. Our son is safe and a healthy human with values I admire. I love him and he loves me. He has married a person I am proud to be related to, and while I have psychological problems, I am able to face them and seek treatment. I inherited sixty thousand dollars from my parents which was not a fortune but that and what I have been able to earn on my own and the good luck of buying a good piece of property when I was young and holding on to it has made it possible to live in a beautiful spot. Most of my friends are happy and healthy, those that haven’t died of natural causes.
My country is facing a tremendous challenge and I can imagine calamities on the horizon I can also imagine solutions and more reasonably I can imagine struggling on to make our country better and in fact a more perfect union. In the traveling I’ve done, I have not seen many more diverse and accepting places. France was diverse but it has a great deal of trouble too with immigration and religious tolerance, and while the Scandinavian Countries talk a good game, I don’t see them taking in all the refugees landing in Turkey and Greece. It’s easy to be ashamed of the U.S. it is true. Lots of problems and ugly crimes. But also so much beauty, starting with the landscape, and the music, the cinema, I would rather live in the country of Jazz with the people who created the Blues, then in France where they simply revere it. It will be easier to make this country the place where our authentic artists are to be revered than it is to disown our own country and make a new one. At least that’s what I think.
All I’m saying today is that I’m happy. I know you may not be, and I’m sorry for that. I know I will be down tomorrow. I know you will be able to wag your finger in my face and remind me of my sins… of our sins.
But today, on this fall afternoon, it is a lovely world and everyone should be able to walk out into it and say, “All this and more of it, is ours to share.”
Everything left out
is just a little damp now
but still…. it’s perfect.
jhs
Here is a recording of me reading Look Alive Twenty-five by Janet Evanovich:
