But maybe it's just too hard to be a writer now.  Too hard to go back and forth between the social and the private worlds.  The private allowed you time for the real work you felt you had to do, out of honor and spirit and for religious reasons.

But there was a hell of a cost for it.  Think of all the vulnerable people who have those late night jobs at checkout counters and so forth...  I became one of them.  Tired, at odd hour, leery of each other, but reaching out by some quiet politeness, to re-identify ourselves as human beings, capable of all things even if we have not succeeded in life by the norm.


I feel stupid and ashamed.  It could be construed I was sneaking around, avoiding humanity on days off, but I felt quite tired, and like Dostoevsky, I wanted the quiet time of the deeper night, three in the morning, which both worked with the circadian rhythm imposed by said job of physical struggle.  This was the time I'd find to grocery shop at the 24 hour stores, the Safeway across the street and a block up from work, and believe me that could be a long walk in the cold hungry night, and for other basic needs the Rite Aid, another walk long enough and dreary in the night, for things like toilet paper, soda water, laundry detergent and paper towels.  Somehow at this hour the sound of the laundry was less offensive, and more calmly I could sit down and try to work, not that I ever really did, but just that it helped to write.  And I could remember the kindness of late night people at work...

It felt that life had gone seriously off-track, and I didn't seem to know anyway to bring it back, such a person was I, disagreeing, not willing to join in so contentedly as do people who smartly know that it's simply wise to do so as far as actual life goes, the things most people want, spouse, house, kids...

Whatever the days I worked, it all succeeded in making me tired.

And in this late hours, of course, of course you wonder about your sanity, about your choices, about where it all is headed.  And further, it felt like you needed, that you deserved, even, a break, of some sort.

Who would want, in their right mind, to be up alone at four AM, working on their little projects...  But how else does it get done?

And perhaps only in such danger do things become clearer, even if you might not want to hear what being clearer is, realizing the very issues...  And you think, hmm, no wonder Dostoevsky wrote at night.  No wonder Dostoevsky penetrated beyond issues of civil authority in the murder story of old Karamazov.

No wonder he depicted Christ as a silent captive, kept in the dungeon by the powerful bishop inquisitor who identifies completely with the profane.  As in, "we have it better without you being here...'



As a boy going to bed I'd look down from the balcony, down into the living room, and there, always, was my father, sitting in his brown chair, with papers around him, reading, perhaps writing on a legal pad, and always after dinner 'til midnight, a good four hours anyway, and often a cat getting an ear rub next to him, one of the wolfhounds or the corgi by the firepot...  He'd put on the teaching performance during the daytime, up at the college, and then, now, he was doing the deeper matters of his work.

When you write you have to poking along, struggling, wading into new waters.  And whoever might come along and read what you might write on that one day, well, they might see blue colors when you are generally painting in orange colors...

There is enough out there to write about, just by existing.  And one could include in that the works of all the painters, from Giotto, and the early guys, to Van Gogh and Cezanne...  Art, art is spiritual, worth noting, as part of the struggle...  part of the path toward a better spiritual understanding, an understanding of the other.

Did they paint with massive doubts hanging over them?  With concerns about the coming crisis of the aging of their elders...

I wish I knew what the old man had been writing, his lesson plans.  His letters were always tremendously well thought and written, long hand with a felt tip pen...  I wish I could have shared him with more of my friends and more people, how sweet and great he was.



The night is self-correcting.  A load of laundry is for the most part done, just in need of being put away.  The time is precious when undisturbed.  And this is why I never go out.

What would I teach if I were a teacher?  I would teach about all sorts of things, no particular subject.  Probably not economics, but what does the great Void and the Universe and all its stuff really care about economics...



I'm not saying I'm a good writer.  I'm not saying I'm a useful writer.  I'm not saying there's much value for any sort of marketplace.  I'm not saying I deserve to be read.  But that is not why anyone writes, not if they are serious.

Some explore the daytime, and some explore the lonely nighttime.  They are both experiences to be had.  Facing yourself...