So, what are the “pressures” I get from the outside
world these days?
Well, from my on-demand publisher, it’s to become
aggressive specifically in selling books.
From social and church-related circles from my
background, it’s to become more committed to other people’s ends (faith trumps
everything), or to join up and give of “myself” in service. The latter is quite heavy, that “service”
becomes something “you are” (April 1).
For me to move into these areas in a meaningful way,
I’ve said I need to “finish my homework” first.
That’s moving, slowly, on the Wordpress blogs. Right now, I’m in the middle of reviewing the
fiction manuscripts I have developed since about 2000, much of the material
before 2005. There is a novel “Tribunal
and Rapture II”, seen from the eyes of a retired fibbie who thinks he was
abducted once. There’s a novella “Rain
on the Snow” where “Bill” goes to an “Academy” for job retraining after a
layoff and meets a charismatic figure who may be an “alien”, and winds up in
jail, only to escape just before “Armageddon”.
There is a longer manuscript that puts these together. And then there is the more recent “Angel’s
Brothers” (mostly from about 2007), seen from the viewpoint of a late thirtyish
but fit “family” man, with a covert CIA job and a day job teaching history, who
meets an unusually charismatic college student (different from the one in
“Rain”). But this novel will
“encapsulate” a combination of the first two novels as a “backstory”, embedded
in a manuscript by the “Bill” character.
Complicated enough? There’s a lot
to sort out. I think I will have gotten
through this by the first week of June. There are about eight more "big" Wordpress postings to do.
There are at least three important screenplays. One of them is a story told from the
viewpoint of a reporter in Dallas who believes his fiancée has been
abducted. The trouble is, he plays on
the side. But the evidence points to a
real encounter with aliens, publicly, and what that would mean.
Another screenplay has a character, me, finding
himself in a bizarre hospital setting, and then in an intentional
community. At first, “Bill” doesn’t know
if he is in the afterlife, having a job interview, or even in jail. Gradually,
as he negotiates his re-education, he realizes he is on another world, but in
return for learning his lessons, he will get to judge who gets to become an
angel.
And, there is the “music” (as I described on April
23). And there is the idea of a
documentary video, which starts from scratch, and does not have (like my third
DADT book) have to build on what is out there already.
The documentary would go like this: I think a central question is, how those of
us who perceive ourselves (and are perceived by others) as “different” should
behave. It’s a moral question, and it
deals with karma. As libertarians know, it’s not (or no longer) a legal one too
much, as laws shouldn’t try to deal with this (you see what happens in
Russia). But there is a certain kind of
bearing and self-deployment that can be sold to others in an open society, and
a lot of behavior and personal motivation that will not fly.
I has pondered the best format for such a
video. It could start with a summary of
my life (like one of Dvorak’s string quartets), with its looks and crannies,
presented like a map on a board game, with lots of still shots and videos of
the real places where stuff happened (like at William and Mary, NIH, the Army,
etc). Maybe that takes 15 minutes. It assumes the viewer hasn’t read the
books.
The narrative produces a list or set of things that
have been expected or even demanded of me, at various points in my life
(especially early and late, not so much the middle) in terms of socialization
(or call it “radical hospitality” and “radical solidarity”). Soon we enter the world of sexual
orientation. As I wrote on a post on the
GLBT blog May 6, we need to understand the “perfect world” of traditional
marriage, as “social conservatives” see it, as generating sustainability. Marriage, in their world, is in a continuous
feedback loop with a more pervasive capacity of everyone – including young and
old people before and after having families (or sometimes never having their
own families) to experience personal complementarity and actually let it mean
something. “Complementarity” requires
more self-giving than “polarity” because it involves helping people with
adaptive needs, not just growing psychological surplus (as in Rosenfels terms). Readiness for people to do this on a personal level does have "global" implications for sustainability/
It’s fair to ask, what am I going to do about all of
this when “it gets personal”? As I said,
I need to reach a breakpoint before I get into new discussions with other
parties – finishing the evaluations above are the major piece to finish. (Otherwise I never get it done.) And, I must note, I perceive conflicting
signals from others. Some want me to
join their causes and because an obedient foot soldier, but dedicated to the
“needs” of the group (often bureaucratically implemented) rather than myself.
But some want to see more “personal contact” with others in actual need,
not just those in my own “cognitive circle”. There is some tension between these two approaches. As to the desire to see personal contact, I perceive mixed and
contradictory signals from others, sometimes.
It is a challenge for someone who did not have his own family, and for
whom some options possible today (like same-sex marriage on the horizon) simply
weren’t feasible in my time. Would I
have been capable of staying in one relationship for a few decades and maintain
passion and accept “the family bed”?
What can I do about this as I navigate the
Breakpoint (which also involves some remaining travel, as getting news on my own is still a top piroirty)? I would like to think I could use the skills
I have. That could include music (piano)
and getting back into chess, so I could actually be a “role model” in my own
way. In the area of chess, there are not
enough opportunities to practice and play non-USCF rated games, without
possibly going to NYC and playing “rehab” in some Village per-hour chess
parlors.
There are things that I can do “within the cognitive
circle” (building on what I said April 23).
I can look at “pimping” Kickstarter, not for my own media projects, but
for related media projects from others (“American Lynching” from Gode Davis
comes to mind). There would be some
opportunities within the music circle, which could lead to fragments of my own
compositions being performed publicly by others.
“Adaptively”, a few things stand out. Yes, I “inherited” a house (there are legal
technicalities beyond scope here).
Taking care of an older home, with its vulnerabilities, especially to
storms, is more a job for a family, for someone raising a family and enlisting
other people. It’s not easy to drop what
I’m doing and downsize quickly (given the contacts that I get), but that raises
an obvious “moral” question. Should
those who “have” be expected to make the effort to house the “have nots”,
especially after increasingly frequent natural disasters? There is some synergy: if you’re prepared for “radical hospitality”
the people you would really want might come.
(Gode Davis actually needed a place to stay when he came to DC in 2005
to film at the Capitol, and with my mother’s situation, I could not offer it
then.)
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