Jane and I were perusing the most recent issue. I was looking for contests to enter with my latest book. Jane was reading selected poets. I scanned an article by a pontificating ass. We soon agreed that the poetry was dreadful; I composed a poem at the moment which reflected the existential and pompous in not a few of the poems. I concluded, given my background as a therapist and naughty human being, I would have a tough time of it in a writer’s workshop — or they with me. The cant and pretentiousness is too much to bear among writers. I come from a different world. So I’ve been thinking of knocking five to 10 poems out that reflect the intellectual discharge of self-inflated selves and submitting this dreck as a lark. I used to tell my secondary students that the real ending of the Emperor’s Clothes is that late that night the emperor’s guard comes and kills the observant child. Like Howard Beale, we need to, at least once, stand up and say all this is shit and I won’t have it anymore. We fear to tell the truth so we pull our punches. It reminds me of Alceste in The Misanthrope who can play along, like most of us, or who can decide to tell the absolute truth. It is called the French Hamlet, but it also can be played as a comedy. I prefer it as a tragedy.
The older I get the less patience I have for fools, especially the pompous, the self-inflated and those who reveal intellectual pretense. Having had years of practice having to tell the truth and all its shades as well, I can tell you it doesn’t get easier. A sweet anecdote for you to suck on. I’m waiting on line, not impatient, but simply wanting to pay for the purchase and get on with it. It was a slow day in the store. The elderly lady before me begins to engage the cashier with stories of her grandchild and with that unfolds a lengthy vertical file of photos, pointing at this one, sharing that tidbit about another. The cashier is “enthralled” with her while I am in line watching this variant of insensitivity. It was a stroke of good luck when the grandma turned to me with her necklace of photos and tried to engage me as well. With that I firmly said in a tensely packed series of words that I had no interest in her grandchild, that I had an interest in purchasing my items and that she was stopping me from going on with my life. With that, both ladies shut up, and my purchase was made. Ordinarily we go along, we suffer fools, we are embarrassed into being”nice” and “playing nice.” I was not rude. I expressed my reality. Jane, my companion, savors this because, as she expresses it, we all wish we could do that on a regular and needed basis. As I grow older, it becomes easier and easier to do without the facades. You work for years with clients having them try to incorporate the express need to be authentic and real.
The secret of my writing is that I go for broke, say what I want, write what I want; yet there are writers who are as restricted as their daily lives. For those of you into writing, give up the false self and get on with the real truth that real writing requires.
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