Tag: faith

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 10

garethlivesay2 Comments

Hi.

Coffee: Sumatra Medium Dark, Trader Joe’s Brand

I finally finished reading ‘Killing Commendatore.’ I read the last chapter while rain came down outside. The book rushes to a climax then wraps things up with an extended epilogue. It feels unfinished, but I think it’s supposed to feel that way. The book was about art – why you love it, why you make it, what it does to you.

For a couple months, I was convinced I’d eventually cut the Coffee Log down to a weekly blog. This was last year, September and October. Life was hectic at the time. I was applying for a new job. I was sitting on a stack of lit journal rejections. I was trying to work things out with an old lover so we could still be friends. I was drinking tall drinks in the aftermath of learning that – at least for a while – we couldn’t. And there I was writing one of these every day.

It was exhausting.

It still is.

My big fear was that I wouldn’t ever write anything else. Sometimes I’ll sit down and spit one of these logs out in the time it takes to blow out a nose full of pollen. Other times, they take over an hour. That’s a lot of life on the weekdays, and a lot of mental energy besides. I’ve learned to scrutinize my day-to-day for things to say in a way I never had before. It’s an invaluable skill, but draining.

So what room’s left for a novel in all of that?

It was Halloween that did it for me. Some friends were over. We were watching Over the Garden Wall. The night was dark and spooky and magic despite having to work the next morning. Halfway through the show, I stole off to my computer to write the daily Coffee Log. If you remember, that was a long one. It was a narrative. It was fiction. It was creepy. I wrote it on the spot and when it was done I felt full. I was a bunch of warm tossed towels spinning in a drier. The next day, I started working on my second book.

This has all been a long-winded way of saying that effort has consequences: good and bad. I feel drained. Sharing these stories daily has changed the way I live life. But at the same time, there’s a new effortlessness in sitting down to write.

‘Killing Commendatore’ is also Murakami finding a sort of religion. Nothing specific or labeled, but rather just belief. Learning to live life believing in something without any evidence for or against it. A kind of faith. I think you have to have that to be an artist. I think you have to have that to be much of anything. It’s scary walking a bridge alone. Sometimes you need someone to walk with you – whether that’s God, Science, or a simple Idea.

Novel Count: 29,417

Currently Reading: Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami; FINISHED!

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You can have all the desire and ache inside you want, but what you really need is a concrete starting point.

Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore


Coffee Log, Day 252

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Sumatra Medium-Dark, Trader Joe’s Brand; when it sits out a few hours, good and cold, and you grab a mouthful and hold it there on the back of your tongue, it tastes real good; new pair of shoes.

I spoke with a middle-aged lady in a denim dress with black cropped hair. She had teacher’s glasses, or maybe librarian’s. Her posture was prime. Her figure was a stick. I asked her if she’d had a nice Halloween.

“Oh,” she says, “We don’t do that. We celebrate Reformation Day.”

And we looked each other dead-on and it was awkward for a sec.

2018 doesn’t teach you how to talk to people. Sure, there’s lots of communication – texts, message boards, the meet-up you do every other Wednesday at the pool bar – but there’s no art to flapping your lips at the familiar. We’ve gotten so good at finding the like-minded to give our time that we’re blindsided when someone with different views comes along. In some ways, I imagine it’s always been so. People are tribal. You stick to your tribe. But I also think that old cave-carving tradition of huddling around a fire and waving sticks at whoever approaches is comically sad.

So I said: “Oh yeah? I’m not familiar. What’s involved with Reformation Day?”

Stick lady lit up. You could tell she was gearing for a fight and this was something other. Her little lips went northward and I watched those glasses bob. Pretty soon, though, she straightened herself and started talking: “Well, it has to do with Martin Luther.”

This much I had gathered. What I hadn’t, though, is that she sits the whole family down in a warm den. There’s a movie on, something Christian, and her husband watches with the kids while she gets things ready. In the kitchen, she’s working a special kind of magic. She files a pretzel to a mock stake ‘like so,’ bakes a big sheet of rice krispy treats, and carefully writes out Luther’s Theses in sweet syrup. When it’s done, they pause the movie and share the meal and talk about a radical faith that’s far removed from anything I believe, but they talk about it earnestly.

When they’re done, it’s another night in bed, another morning, and here we are together, me and her, having had two separate celebrations but sharing the same air, the same blood, the same label of ‘America’ with all it’s horrors and glories.

I thanked her for the story. She started walking. When she was almost out the door, I said “Happy Reformation Day.”

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

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“‎What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and work flow.” – Martin Luther

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Coffee Log, Day 176

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Cafe Pajaro, Extra Dark Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

Met a teacher of twelve years who’s quitting the profession because it doesn’t pay as well as her summer gig bartending. She’s got an MA in Education but the state of North Carolina doesn’t compensate for that.

I talked to three different techs on a customer service line and each time they started asking me to solve the problem, like “What happens when you do this?”; “What do you think we should try?” A technical issue, we fixed it. Solidarity’s something, I guess.

There’s a technical issue at work that makes certain associates stay late; the higher-ups suggest ways to be productive after close, all of which rely on systems affected by the technical issue. When the point’s raised, it’s taken in stride, we all laugh about it, no better suggestions come to mind.

I took two courses on the Philosophy of Science. We talked about paradigm shifts and air pumps, but mostly we spent time trimming authority. Much of what we know (or think we know) as a society is secured by appreciation of scientific or technical expertise. We point to people who mastered a common dogma, who’ve run the right tests and passed with colors. ‘Experts:’ stuck on pedestals like cherubs in the clouds, but we seldom come to terms with the fact that we, the people, built those pedestals.

Which is sad, scary, and dangerous, because it’s fuel on the fires of ‘fake news’ and other evil exploitations of reasonable doubt. A tug-of-war, two sides taught, one believing everything and the other nothing. ‘Truth,’ instead, is gritty, changing, evolutionary; it’s somewhere in the mud.

So NC tells her best teachers to kick bricks with their fancy graduate degrees, bigwigs burned by too many flawed phone calls with their cable reps.

Currently Reading: LaRose, Louise Erdrich

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“My answer to him was, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.” – Isaac Asimov

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