A Note

The Fire and the Night

Have you ever felt bored? To be bored is to think a thing is predictable, trivial, known, and not just useless, but meaningless. That’s how I feel lately, reading…things. Columns and articles and essays and books. Every “ism” in the world is out there. But the moment I know the “ism” that defines a person, especially a writer or an intellectual, I know exactly what they are going to say next. Liberal, conservative, capitalist, socialist, feminist, and so on. And that’s when I make the mistake of clicking past the headline. And yet, in this age of Nazis and nuclear war, it’s all never felt more goddamned meaningless. So I’m bored. Desperately and totally bored.

But it’s not just about “isms”. I’m bored with the superficiality of only discussing “isms”. Sorry. I can’t read another year’s worth of celebrity scandal and political outrage and condemnations of racism and fascism from magazines and newspapers that have barely profiled a woman or a minority once in a hundred years. I can’t read it, and therefore I sure as hell can’t write it. What’s missing? What’s in there? Is there anything in this “isms” centric way of not-really-thinking? Anything meaningful, interesting, compelling, insightful, about life? Being, loving, knowing, holding, breaking, falling apart, growing, stretching, dying? The point and purpose of it all? Don’t we just elide those very questions, suppose that we have already answered them, with our crushingly predictable “isms” and our endless yet infinitely pointless outrage? Isn’t all that really a mask only impotence would choose to wear? Just the last night of the last call at a bar that everyone goes to but no one’s really at?

I’ve never wanted to waste a breath of my precious, glittering life on anything less than what mattered. I’ve always written about what was on my mind, and only that. I’ve never written to please you, or even please me. And what is on my mind now, in this age of death, hate, ruin, and despair, is life, beauty, truth, and grace. What it really is, deep down in its broken yet still beating heart. Whether or not you like that, want it, need it, or approve of it, I could frankly give a damn.

And that brings me to you and me. I used to think: we’re different. Lately, I’ve begun to think that even that is wrong, a yawning understatement. We’re not just…

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