11 - my proper mode
The course of our lives can be changed by such little things, so many passing by, each intent on his own problems, so many faces that one might easily have been lost. I know now, nothing happens by chance, every moment is measured, every step counted.
—Lisa Berndl, in Letter from an Unknown Woman
~~~
Oh so many years ago I was in the book business. The best years came when I was on the floor buying for our new release tables. So much to read, so little time. Books you happened to read and be affected by, pure chance often, you’d end up becoming their advocate. I was a supreme hand-seller. Engaged and persuasive I was. If the book knocked my socks off I’d go to the wall for it, keep it in hardback as long as I could, and convince every new reader that came into the store that this book would change their life. I believed it, and the inquiring reader could see that I meant every word; and they’d buy it.
We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World is Getting Worse was my greatest success. Kept it in hardcover for well over two years. A marvelous back and forth between the maverick Jungian James Hillman and LA Weekly’s Michael Ventura.
The reverberating wisdom in their conversation came in these simple lines from Hillman, “But suppose you take it the other way and read a person's life backwards…. Suppose we look at the kids who are odd or stuttering or afraid, and instead of seeing these as developmental problems we see them as having some great thing inside of them, some destiny that they're not yet able to handle. It's bigger than they are and their psyche knows that. So that's a way of reading your own life differently.”
The reverberations were profound. After getting the job at the bookstore I had begun to write again. Musing on my failings to that point: nine books written and copyrighted, unpublished, and no interest; my marriage to Claire Boston, over after five years, wondering if I’d ever love again; then Hillman’s “acorn” theory, reading life backwards, a goad to be more contemplative and reflective about what’s happening all along the way.
After Hillman I’m a changed human being. I’m on the floor and customers flock to me. They know my recommendations will be heartfelt and thoughtful, they know I will find whatever book they’re looking for. I will be attentive, I will special order it if need be, I will get it done for them. I am not surly or smart-ass or appalled by any condescension that comes. Yes, we’re in a minimum wage environment and yes customers can be rude, and ugly and arrogant. And I always gave them the mirror. My genuine desire to help kept them enthralled.
This the real beginning of my journey, Hillman my guide. After reading 100 Years… I got hold of the next, and more obscure work, Healing Fiction. As Bergson’s Creative Evolution was for Henry Miller, Healing Fiction was for me. If you never dip in and engage Hillman, this alone should make a difference. It’s from George Quasha (Publisher’s Preface):
“Our reality is created through our fictions, to be conscious of these fictions is to gain creative access to, and participation in, the poetics or making of our psyche or soul-life; the ‘sickness’ of our lives has its source in our fictions, our fictions can be ‘healed’ through willing participation, and in this atmosphere of healing, they reclaim their intrinsic therapeutic function. The status of fiction, so easily regarded as the ‘lies’ produced by the psychopathology of everyday life, is returned to the level of poetics and to the basis of mind itself. That his view of mind, of poetics, of healing, of fiction is itself fictional, ceases to threaten its own authenticity and authority and instead becomes a source, something between the willing suspension of disbelief and the acceptance of life as it is.”
Destiny, brothers and sisters, destiny. It’s on us, it’s our story, our lives, we’re the creators. It was in the bookstore that I realized I got a kick out of assisting and supporting others. It juiced me. Got a high from it. In the end an important element in understanding who I am, this—my proper mode.
A key bit of self-awareness, and it led me away from corporate bookselling and into the world of nonprofit work, and a realization that working in environments where money and profit were the end-all and be-all was such a waste of our creative and soulful endeavors. We should all be engaged and passionate about delivering on a mission, on being a part of an organization or community service that makes a difference in, and has a positive impact on, the lives of others.
And coming right back round this is where Camille and I connected. It’s elemental and profound, it’s the ground, and it’s more than unsettling. I’m falling for her, for her genuine selflessness, and even if there’s an element of ego with her, it’s an ego of egolessness, a selfless self. Christ! More frigging paradox.
And it just keeps getting better. I had it wrong, she’s not a painter or a photographer; she writes poetry when she’s not a nurse. I asked her point blank in an email message and she revealed. She keeps it hidden from most. It’s where she’s alone and solitudinous; and where I would trundle off to the library and sequester myself with books and a computer, she goes out into the world with her senses, apart, in the midst of, and takes it all in.
Imagine it, will you? Someone with a poetic sensibility, someone with the courage and strength to see, hear and feel honestly and openly, someone with a bit of Keats’s negative capability, and a bedrock empathy, and they find their way into oncology seeking to be a part of the community that tends to the suffering of others. How strong she must be, what soulful reserve she must have?
Could not have fathomed any of this, nothing that has transpired. I am resurrected in the most astounding way. Camille? A wonder…
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 at 6:41AM 
Reader Comments (3)
“Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.”
Friend:
Well, it's not about money in the end, it's about the process. I could quote Beckett here, "… No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
But I think Vonnegut's view of writing more to the point; that it allows "… mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence." It even allows "… lunatics to seem saner than sane."
I love the occasional "yoda" moments in your writing. :)