Palisade, MN--Hardly slept a wink last night, as they say, and consequences include being still partly tired and getting to feel a damp corner of my pillow grow and grow until by 4 or 5 a.m. the whole thing was soaked. This is the kind of camping they don't show you in the movies (Ed./Stuart: it's the only kind of camping they show you in the movies!). Rain has finally let, more or less, but there's no sun yet and so we're not sure what to do today quite yet, as we really don't want to transport two waterlogged tents. So I guess we'll see.
Palisade is the kind of small town that makes people long to live in a mythological small town. Everyone knows everyone, people have regular meals at the cafe, and there's just enough variety downtown to keep you interested (sick of the cafe? Go to Kelly's Kitchen. Sick of Kelly's? Go to the cafe.), etc, etc, I think this town's hiding something. Although if they were, it wouldn't be too much extra trouble to hide some of the other unpleasant stuff, so they're probably clear. Eve had our waitress last night (at Kelly's, just in case you needed to know) pegged as gay but I think she was just Minnesotan (Ed./Stuart: you didn't think you were going to slip that one by me, did you? I may not know “lie” from “lay” but I'm an astute spotter of what won't fly, shall we say, politically.). Saw my first Confederate flag of the trip (I gotta be honest, I was expecting some sooner in these Coleman Counties (the company or the politician, either one works)) in the rear window of a beat-up but surprisingly fuel-efficient-looking compact--usually Northerners who identify with the Southern Rebellion (incidentally, for a while yesterday I was singing “Ballad of Booth” at the top of my lungs) tend to use fuel rather liberally--what follows is a conjecture--in order to show up all those paternalistic environmentalists as well as those high-credit-card-bill-hating parents (who also happen to be paternalistic). It was a little odd seeing one on a car that looked to get well over 30 mpg.
The other night I was thinking about something my mom said to me about processes of absorption and creation, that you need to have stuff ot absorb before you can create something, and I'm wondering if its somehow counter(-?)productive to be too, well, fancy with what I write so I don't interrupt the absorptive process. But the I thought, well that's just about the stupidest idea I've ever had, so it's all good now. Of course you're supposed to record as you absorb because you should be recording all the time. Besides, recording what you think is the most secure way of being able to look back and say, yup, I was wrong about that and that and that and etc etc. And just talking and thinking about the things you experience seems to me to be a sure way to get a grip on those things before they power some sort of misguided endeavor. I want my work to have an adequate intelligence so it doesn't stumble blindly through the wilderness.
But does keeping a blog or journal (I'm aware of the discrepancies, Stu, but my point applies to both, I think) somehow cheapen what is recorded (never mind, it applies only to the blog)? When you exhibit your writing, well, when you write with the awareness of its potentially being exhibited, does it change what you write? And I don't (well, first I'll just say I think the answer is probably yes and the real problem is if it matters) mean just little asides to people you know are reading, I mean do you anticipate problems and search out solutions and censor and edit and do you just write under a more critical eye? Well but isn't all writing naturally aware that it may one day somewhere be read? Can writer and reader be one and the same and both equally effective?
I'm sorry if this seems academic or just one of those phases that people go through and those of you who've been through it and answered the questions already are just waiting for me to hurry the hell up and get to the other side (this is the kind of thought you have when you're around smart older people all the time and are intellectually insecure to begin with), but I need to think through it. And here again the question is raised: would this paragraph have been written if I was conceiving of this journal as entirely private, For My Eyes Only?
And I have to say yes. Yes, absolutely (or as absolutely as I feel comfortable answering, which isn't terribly absolute in any objective kind of way but relatively, for me, is pretty strong). Not just because as I write I can feel the disembodied eyes of my audience nearing and fading, sometimes into nothingness and something close enough to see faces (hi Bevin! Hi Grace!... Grace?), but because, well, first because I can't imagine what would be different if I was writing just for myself (which might just be my own intellectual weakness but shut it down, Mac, shut that insecurity down) but mostly because I am a critical reader already. I read with an eye for what is wrong and right and new and interesting and scrap that which needs to be scrapped, and not just when I pause but even as the pen flickers across the page. And Faulkner says that a young writer must learn all the mythology and how to be a critic (godawful paraphrase, that) and “learning it, forget it forever” but that's a trick I've not yet learned, hence the editor. Because there is no such thing as writing for yourself, it's a fool's errand, and writing for an audience, however small, is, well I suppose it's what writing is for, but it makes the writing better, too. Because you edit. You add and excise and omit entirely. You listen and hear. We hear our very thoughts and make them poetic even if we know they'll never be spoken or written.
Editor's (Stuart's, too, I suppose, but it's time to stop that charade) Note: OK that was lovely, but I do believe it's time to exercise those powers and let's put it to bed, sleepyhead.
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