A strange brew is this, and not all of it is pretty. Partially a record of a crackup and partially a tale of rising from that crackup back into a useful life; and part of that is how I decided writing was necessary to my life and recovery; and another part is just keeping a record of where I have been and what I have learned. You can see the topics I cover the sidebar. The hope is to help others; the purpose is figuring out where I am going. Thank you for dropping by. Feel free to comment.
[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 2 sch 8/14/2026]
I spent most of 1988 licking my wounds over T1. There was an encounter with Cindy—a wonderfully erotic and tender pair of encounters - but she would not go out with me again. There was a bit of shared history from college that she could not get over. She never knew that she had just to snap her fingers. Delicate, sweet Cindy married in 2008 or 2009. I wish her well.
And there was an encounter with Shelly about then. Questions raised since high school got an answer of sorts. Having dated what seemed like all my friends. I was curious about her charms. She proved TJ's theory that great sex requires love, passion. I would go so far as to say that good sex requires affection for one another. Never go to bed with a woman who does not laugh.
Then I spent a considerable time mooning over LAH again. She would invate and then push away when I got too close.
And then I met Paula of Bloomington while working for a bill collector. Her wit led me to ask her for a date. She possessed all the energy and loveliness of TJ. Sandy-haired and buxom. Wonderfully energetic in bed with a habit of scratching one's back. Her two children were her life. If I had the nerve then to become a stepfather; it would have been an interesting marriage. I lost track of Paula after 1998. She shared another quality with TJ: the world was with her in it. Perhaps my affection for Bloomington has a lot to do with Paula.
I think time has come Regina. Another on/off relationship with her for a few years. I lost track of her between 1993 and 2008. I saw her at the Madison County Government Center. She was even livelier than when we dated. Like T1, she was about 5'10”. Of women I should have married, she was number 3. Regina had the temper to keep me in line, the brains to keep me from getting bored, and a sex drive to keep us both busy. Unlike any other, the end of our relationship was not primarily because of my emotional disabilities. No, Regina felt her being African-American would cause me problems. Not that she ever asked me how I felt. She would tell my friend JH that I was the only white guy she would go out with. Regina never knew how much I loved her.
sch
[When I returned from prison, I found out Paula died in 2010. She had health problems when I knew her. Regina was the onlyex-girlfriend to write me in prison. Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 4 sch 8/14/2026]
[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. Continued from 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 1 sch 8/14/2026]
KH threw a New Year's party in Anderson to which he invited me and T1. Not as a couple, not as a matchmaking venture. I have not mentioned T1 was 5'10”, had light-brown hair; that night she wore slacks, an Oxford shirt, a pink sweater, and a thin black leather tie. We drank, chatted, and flirted. I could not resist reminding her about her seeing me on her back porch and ruining her fun at a party in the summer. She blushed as pink as her seater. We were both intoxicated when midnight passed and she suggested I follow her back to her Muncie aprtment.
She was 21, and I learned a lot from her. T1's favorite movie was9 1/2 Weeks. She had the novel as well. I got a hint of what was to come that first night when she told me to tie her up. Clueless, I wrapped the tie around her thigh. She taught me different in the following months.
The relationship stopped at the end of the school year with a couple of eruptions after that. I have not heard much from her since I married. Although T1 married a fellow who did not like me and has been married the second-longest of my friends, there were vibes given off that she disapproved of my marriage. I think like most of my ex-girlfriends, she did better without me than with me. I find solace in that.
However, she has a more current reason for being angry at me. T1 is the mother of my only son. He contacted me through Facebook; I expected a phone call and never contacted him before my arrest. She had opted for an open adoption, so he knew who I was. His birth ended my sexual relationship with T1 and the start of our friendship.
What followed was a bit more muddled.
sch
[I looked up T1 this year. It was a bit surreal. Yes, it had been over, or about, 20 years since I saw her. She did not recognize me. She had no interest in speaking with me, but was not outright rude. About our son, she made it clear that they had not spoken in years. Our son knows how to reach me; he has not. I do not think it would be good for him to be associated with me, so I stay silent. Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 3. sch 8/14/2026]
[I am back working through my pretrial detention journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars.sch 8/14/2026]
Gunshy as I was from breaking up with TJ, I did not hurry into another romantic relationship with any woman. I blamed myself for all that had gone wrong.
I got attached to LAH during my second semester of law school. She was Bones back then. Like me she came from Central Indiana. Unlike any of our other classmates. Blonde hair, firm breasts, thin, who was always being hailed home on weekends by her mother. Scared and lonely as I was at law school. We had one date while in law school. She transferred to the IU Indianapolis Law School for her second year. I took her out a few times during the summer of 1985. It was difficult to ignore her. I dropped by one time, she wore jeans with the seat ripped out and a white cotton T-shirt that only accentuated her breats. I came close to those breasts during that summer. I lay on the floor of her parents' basement looking at the first naked breasts I had seen since the previous year. Only I made the mistake of smiling. (What else could one do when confronted by such a beautiful, wondrous sight?) She stood up, got dressed, and had me leave soon after. She thought I was laughing at her.
That began a relationship that lasted on and off with me dealing with her mental health issue and getting repaid with scorn until 2005. It ended when I told her I was to marry. She said I would end up in the gutter. Why did it go on for so long? It was not sex. We made it to bed only twice, then it was platonic. It was me who suggested she take up women. No, LAH had no other friends, and I thought I could help her. I must admit that her prophecy came true. She played with my head like it was a revolver. My friends made it clear that if I ever let her back in my life they would drop me. I hope her mental health is now better than mine.
The one who saved me was E. She came after me. I can say it is a very pleasant surprise to find a naked woman in one's walk-in closet. We remained friends but drifted apart as I went south and she remained in northern Indiana. I wish I ha felt financially comfortable enough to have taken up an offer she made me in 2009. She wanted me to take time off and stay on her farm. Sorry, I did not do so E. The failure belongs solely to me.
T1 came into my life almost accidentally. Friends thinking I needed a feminine distraction invited me to a party in Muncie to meet a sure thing. (Which brings to mind Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing, and why is it seldom seen nowadays?) That was T1's roommate. Only she was too blonde, too thin, and too vacuous to interest me. Nor did I pay much attention to T1, she was attached to someone else and my mind was on TJ. This party was the longest time I spent in Muncie since breaking up with TJ. I stood on the back porch of T1's second floor apartment, looking over the neighborhood. I was only a few blocks from where I had disasterously impregnated TJ. I left soon after. I drove around the places in Muncie TJ and I had frequented in the old days (something I would do even after I finally married.)
I did catch T1's eye. Seems she and her boyfriend were below me engaging in sex when she looked up and saw me standing there. I became a coitus interruptus without becoming aware of it. My mind, my eyes were on 1984. I did not know what I had done until months later, after a call from KH telling what had transpired below me. It gave me a good laugh and a little guilt at spoiling T1's fun. The next time we met things went differently.
sch
[Continued in 6-6-2010: The Women In My Life; Part 2. sch 8/14/2026]
I got out and about yesterday. I fixed the problems with Xfinity, had brunch at Jersey Mike's and shopped at Aldi's.
I had to schlep my groceries from University to Riverside, a walk about 4 short blocks, and that did me in for most of the day.
It was a gloomy day and humid. It was one of those Indiana's days when it's like living in a warm, damp sponge.
I slept most of the afternoon and into the evening. Then I could not sleep. I watched a bit more of Penny Dreadful. I had seen most of it years ago and am finishing it up. I like its variations on the idea of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It also made an interesting comment on Frankenstein, that he could create but had no interest in nurture. There is something to think about in that; especially in light of Mary Shelley being Frankenstein's creator.
I went down to the convenience store when I finally felt the energy to move about. A blue, clear sky above, a coolness in the wind, and a pleasant deficit of humidity.
The time since has been spent on reading online articles and answering emails. I do not feel like I have the energy to work on a short story that I have in the works. Perhaps the article.
Thank you for sending "After Making Landfall" to CRAFT for consideration. We appreciate the opportunity to review your work. At this time, however, we must say no to this piece. Best of luck placing this one elsewhere soon.
There was some debate during the group session last week about what was meant by a hundred year flood, and I learned with were all wrong. U.S. Geological Survey's The 100-Year Flood explains:
"100-year floods can happen 2 years in a row"
Statistical
techniques, through a process called frequency analysis, are used to
estimate the probability of the occurrence of a given precipitation
event. The recurrence interval is based on the probability that the
given event will be equaled or exceeded in any given year. For example,
assume there is a 1 in 50 chance that 6.60 inches of rain will fall in a
certain area in a 24-hour period during any given year. Thus, a
rainfall total of 6.60 inches in a consecutive 24-hour period is said to
have a 50-year recurrence interval. Likewise, using a frequency
analysis (Interagency Advisory Committee on Water Data, 1982) there is a
1 in 100 chance that a streamflow of 15,000 cubic feet per second (ft3/s) will occur during any year at a certain streamflow-measurement site. Thus, a peak flow of 15,000 ft3/s
at the site is said to have a 100-year recurrence interval. Rainfall
recurrence intervals are based on both the magnitude and the duration of
a rainfall event, whereas streamflow recurrence intervals are based solely on the magnitude of the annual peak flow.
Ten
or more years of data are required to perform a frequency analysis for
the determination of recurrence intervals. Of course, the more years of
historical data the better—a hydrologist will have more confidence on an
analysis of a river with 30 years of record than one based on 10 years
of record.
Integrity has been so diminished of late but I was shocked byCapitalism, as Told by Its Enemies - Phillip W. Magness, Caleb Petitt (The Dispatch). No one is perfect, no human being sees all; therefore, intellectual integrity requires us to admit as much. Mr. Magness and Mr. Pettit provide what such integrity should look like:
A more balanced entry on capitalism for the SEP could have offered a constructive assessment of this subject, its history, and the contemporary state of scholarship around it. Such an entry could still have room for critics in the Marxist and many other socialist traditions, but they would not have the disproportionate dominance found in Cordelli’s piece. Instead, a better entry might include serious engagement with the Scottish Enlightenment precursors to the emergence of market capitalism in the late 18th century, with references to David Hume’s work on trade and currency, as well as something more than superficial references to Adam Smith.
It might also discuss how the ideas we call “capitalism” came to supplant an older mercantilist economic order that used government policies to steer an economy for nationalistic objectives. It might also discuss the period of both political and philosophical contestation between the “capitalist” and “Marxian communist” worlds following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and culminating in the collapse of the latter in 1991. It could discuss in greater depth the theoretical contributions of institutionalist economists like Ronald Coase, Oliver Williamson, and Douglass North in the mid-20th century around the theory of a market economy. It might mention Deirdre McCloskey’s work on the Great Enrichment as a positive argument for what we colloquially refer to as capitalism. And it might explore the tensions between these and other theorists of market capitalism. As it stands, this rich and complex academic literature receives nary a mention beyond a few passing citations.
Since capitalism is fundamentally an economic concept, one could reasonably expect to see mainstream economic voices discussed, and competently so, by someone versed in economic theory. There would be a clear description of how profits work both as signals of demand and incentives for entrepreneurship, how competition between firms disciplines market actors, how market prices make economic calculation possible by signaling the relative scarcity of goods in a common denominator, and how government policies contribute to the creation of monopolies. Marxist and socialist critiques of capitalism from the far left would also be balanced with mainstream economic critiques of socialism. Early in the 20th century, there was famously a debate among economists over whether socialist central planners were capable of engaging in economic calculation. The economists who argued against the possibility of socialist calculation ultimately won the debate—though one would not know this from reading Cordelli’s entry.
Welfarist arguments for capitalism would not be confined to a single paragraph, and would describe in detail how free-market capitalism has been responsible for lifting the world out of poverty. The way that capitalism incentivizes entrepreneurship, and the role entrepreneurs play in arbitrage and the creation of new goods and services, would play a more important role than the entry’s single paragraph on Joseph Schumpeter, the first economist to make entrepreneurship central to the understanding of economic development and change.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s unwillingness to select an author for the entry on capitalism who could provide a charitable or even neutral assessment of the concept is ultimately unscholarly. In the 20th century, socialism resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people, and capitalism and free markets were the critical factors for lifting billions out of poverty, and yet it is socialism that received the positive encyclopedia entry and capitalism that garnered the hate. Such imbalances could only emerge from an academic environment in which an ideological echo chamber supplants rigorous peer review, and the fashionable socialist perspectives of the professoriate lead it to mistake bad caricatures of a market economy for descriptive fact.
[I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. Consider this post as more of an aborted memoir. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars.sch 8/14/2026]
Those looking for prurient information should skip this section. I dated only two women while in law school.
I started Valparaiso University School of Law in August of 1984.
My first semester was rocky. I had been out of school for two years. I was neither certain if I retained any academic abilities nor that I belonged there socially.
Second semester became a disaster. I came back knowing my mother's lung cancer had returned to kill her and that TJ no longer wanted me. I teetered on the brink of flunking out. That I might not survive scholastically was a first for me.
Dad offered to mortgage his house. I turned him down. I spent the summer working for him so I could be close to Mom. I got myself onto law review by way of the law review's case comment writing competition. (By the way, I consider my contest entry better written than my law review note which is stilted, pedantic, and boring.) I reverted to a pre-TJ mentality for survival: the professors, the school, became the enemy, my opponents.
I survived the summer of 1985 and watching the effects of chemo on Mom. With my attitude towards school, I survived. Even with Mom dying in March 1986 and learning in April that my Great-Aunt Elsie had liver cancer, I made it through.
I stayed with and worked for my father the summer of 1986 so I could spend time with Aunt Elsie. She died a month after I started my Fall semester class. I made it to graduation.
Survive may be a bit of an understatement, as I increased my grade point average and class ranking every semester. This occurred even though in my last year I was on law review, had a part-time job at the undergraduate library, delivered pizzas for about a month, and was a professor research assistant. I always knew how to work.
I thought law school was a serious place for serious people. They were not the educated morons I met at college. To the disappointment of at least one professor, we were not interested in the abstract, scholarly aspects of the law but in careers that could put food on the table. Thankfully, I was at Valparaiso instead of Indiana University-Indianapolis. Valparaiso offered none of the distractions of people and places in Indianapolis.
I think I would have done better for myself had offered the clinical class that it now offers. Anyone actually wanting to practice law needs to take clinicals. They will do themselves great harm by avoiding practical experience.
I will also say that a law school education is one of the best educations anyone can have and more should be exposed to its rigors. However, not everyone should practice law and no one should feel any shame about graduating law school and then foregoing the practice of law. I could not imagine not practicing law. I think now that I was utterly unprepared for the business side of law.
(How to know if you should go into private practice? If you cannot schmooze, if you cannot network with those your business depends upon, then a solo practice is not for you. Also read Jay Foonberg's How To Start and Build A Law Practice.)
Since becoming a felon, I seriously doubt ever being asked back to my law school (or to any other), but for the last twenty years I have wanted to tell law students two words they need for success. Those two words are: cash flow.
I admit creating a serious problem for myself by financing my law school career with student loans. I lost all control over my student loan payments in 1999. I took this path on the advice of my Aunt Mary Ellen's youngest son. Tax policy then allowed deducting student loans. Tax law changed, but being committed to finishing what I started, I took out more loans. Never base any long-term plans on the federal tax law. Doing so truly is building one's foundation on sand.
(Another interruption: with the Great Recession, the firms shed lawyers and student loan debt requires a steady income for younger lawyers. I predict we will be seeing younger lawyers leaving the profession and fewer wanting to go into the profession; law schools will soon find the environment as competitive as we did in private practice. I worry about the smaller cities in Indiana. I have already seen fewer younger lawyers coming into Anderson as solo practitioners. Operating costs have increased. I expect the Anderson paradigm of solo attorneys sharing office space as being extinct by the time I finish my sentence. Which then raises the question of how many people will go without what variety of legal services.)
I left law school for private practice. I had had no plans for myself past graduation. All the reasons I had for law school and going into the legal profession had departed from my life by May of 1987. I was never good at doing things for myself, such selfishness never felt right to me. I had no idea what to do now that I was on my own. No real goals other than to make money. Inertia saved me a lot of thinking, and I was heading back to Anderson.
[It looks like I was not far off the mark in 2010 about new law school students: Law School Enrollment Trends, 1963-2025 (LawHub ). And I was not wrong about law schools, but did not expect it to get worse:
Part of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of
America’s “AI Red Lines in Orthodox Theology” project, supported by a
grant from the Future of Life Institute, the panel identified five
Orthodox “red lines” for AI: that it must never replace human
responsibility, never replace human presence, never be confused with the
nous, never reduce the human person to data, and never allow capability
to outpace wisdom.
Fr. John opened his remarks by tracing the
anxieties surrounding AI to older stories about the limits of human
freedom, pointing to the myth of Prometheus and the Book of Genesis.
“The principal lesson gleaned from such texts is that we are not God,” Fr. John said. “Yet, most of us live as if we are God.”
He described a spiritual dimension to
modern technology, calling algorithmic innovation a form of idolatry and
cautioning that the companies developing AI are driven by profit rather
than the wellbeing of those who use their products.
Fr. John connected this reality to a broader anthropocentrism.
“In contrast to the divine mandate in
Genesis for us “to serve and preserve” creation,” he said, “we are
developing AI with the assumption that its sole objective is to serve
and preserve us.” “We need to re-learn what it means to be a
part—unique and indispensable, but one part—of creation. Otherwise, we
will treat the world—both other human beings and the rest of
creation—purely as raw material for consumption and exploitation,” Fr.
John continued.
Fr. John also warned that AI may usher in newer, faster methods of injustice and discrimination.
“Algorithms—especially those that
determine employment, housing, and healthcare—tend to replicate or
reinforce already existing and deeply embedded societal biases,” he
said. “AI is unlike previous technological revolutions—like the printing
press or the television—because it can actually decide whom to help or
heal, whom to overlook or hurt.”
Turning to the distinction between intelligence and nous, Fr. John invoked the patristic separation of “intelligence” (dianoia or mathematical thinking) from “intuition” (noesis
or spiritual understanding). Artificial intelligence, he said, does not
have a complex inner worlds, inner motivations, or an emotional
landscape, and thus questions about meaning or hope will never be
resolved through it.
Fr. John also offered a measured critique of the recent papal encyclical on AI, Magnifica Humanitas.
He observed that its title refers to human greatness rather than the
glory of God, and noted that the piece opens with the story of the Tower
of Babel rather than with the story of God’s covenant with Noah to
preserve creation.
On approaching our creation “in the image
of God,” Fr. John argued for balance. Genesis states that humanity is
formed in God’s image, he said, but the same text also describes
humanity as fashioned “from the dust of the earth,” sharing its day of
creation with every other living creature.
Forgetting we are “inseparably
interconnected with nature,” Fr. John said, leads to a distorted sense
of human exceptionalism that is, at best, a “half-truth.”
The recognition of those churches and communities’ ecclesial nature
outside of the Orthodox Church’s canonical boundaries compels the Church
to be in an unceasing dialogue and collaboration with them, allowing
the Holy Spirit to move all into complete unity with Christ. However,
recognizing the ecclesial nature of other nonorthodox Christian churches
and communions does not sanction, at least for the Orthodox Church, the
practice of intercommunion. The Church’s reluctance to be in
sacramental communion with other Christian churches—despite the
affirmation that they are imperfectly and incompletely members of the
One Church of God—should not be perceived as a sign of arrogance, and
neither should it be a source of Orthodox triumphalism or
self-sufficiency. It does not allow the churches to become complacent
with present relative unity and collaboration. It is a painful reminder
to all that the unity of God’s Church requires the fullness of the
Apostolic faith, life, and witness. Toward this realization, the
churches are called to intensify their prayers so “that all Christians
may work together so that the day may soon come when the Lord will
fulfill the hope of the Orthodox churches, and there will be ‘one flock
and one shepherd’ (Jn. 10:16).
It is in this spirit that we call the faithful of the Orthodox Church
in America—and, through their witness, this nation—to repentance:
repentance for injustices past and present; for the idols of wealth,
comfort, and power that seduce every generation; for the divisions and
enmities that tear at the fabric of common life; and for the ways in
which we have failed to love our neighbors as ourselves. A true
commemoration of a nation’s founding is not mere self-congratulation; it
is a moment of sober examination, of honest confession, and of renewed
dependence upon God.
The Church does not speak this word from a posture of superiority. We
acknowledge our own failures—in charity, in unity, and in the fullness
of our witness to the Gospel. We, too, stand in need of God’s mercy. But
it is precisely because the Church has known the healing power of
repentance that she cannot withhold this word from the world she is
called to serve.
I think therein is an answer to those who can see only America's wrongs and those who pride themselves on being anti-woke. Acknowledging failures must be followed by the repair of damage done. Ignoring our failures is hubris.
There is a Byzantine word that guards this mystery from being turned into propaganda: charmolýpē
“joyful sorrow.” The word sounds paradoxical because it is a paradox,
not of logic but of spiritual truth. It does not describe alternating
moods, as if joy and sorrow take turns. Rather, it names a single,
integrated experience: joy that has not forgotten the Cross, and sorrow
that has not lost the rose scent of the Kingdom. Charmolýpē is
not a decorative nuance of Orthodox piety; it is a discipline of the
heart. It teaches us how to celebrate without arrogance, how to hope
without cruelty, how to speak of victory without becoming triumphalist.
Triumphalism
is a subtle temptation precisely because it borrows the vocabulary of
faith. It speaks easily of “victory,” “chosen people,” “truth,”
“enemies,” “purity,” “greatness.” It appears in religion, ethnicity,
politics, even in the Church’s own self-understanding. Its danger lies
in replacing the Gospel’s disarming power with a familiar one: the power
to dominate, to humiliate, to rank human beings. It imagines that God’s
truth must appear as our superiority, that blessing must look like
strength. In such a climate, the Cross becomes embarrassing—a means to
something more “successful.” Resurrection is reduced to a trophy, and
Christ becomes to a tool.
Our time
offers many examples of this drift, especially in heated political
cultures where leaders are clothed in messianic language: savior,
healer, anointed, the one who alone can fix what is broken. In the
United States, this temptation has become particularly visible in the
way the President has been portrayed by some supporters in
quasi-messianic terms, and at times has spoken in ways that reinforce
such a narrative. The point is not to score partisan arguments, but to
name a theological distortion: the substitution of Christ with a
political image of redemption, where salvation is reduced to the triumph
of power and healing to the defeat of enemies. When Christian language
is recruited to sanctify domination, the Church is no longer teaching
the nations; she is being taught by them.
***
Charmolýpē lives precisely here. Even in resurrection, Christ
is humble. Even in glory, He remains the One who poured Himself out. The
wounds do not disappear as if they were mistakes. They remain, not as
raw pain, but as radiant memory, a witness that love has a cost, and
that the cost was freely embraced. This is why Christian joy cannot
become arrogant. If the Risen Christ carries wounds into eternity, then
the Church has no permission to preach victory as the humiliation of
others, or to present God’s Kingdom as a celebration of our strength. To
proclaim Pascha truthfully is to proclaim a victory that looks, at
first glance, like weakness: a candle flame flickering in the dark.
[Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.]
Much has been lately about cancel culture and writers not being morally up to snuff. I wrote about this on my old blog several times. Until I read What Went Wrong When Susan Sontag Met Thomas Mann? (The New Yorker), did it occur to me the problem may be more in the worshipper than the worshipped. I do not think I ever worshipped an artist. As much as I admire Kurt Vonnegut, I would not worship him. It is not so hard for me to like The Rolling Stones without worshipping them; if Altamont does explain why, then Dirty Work should. Why should I expect an artist to be a better person than me? No, the real question should be if the work is better than the person, better than what I could do myself?
This is the paragraph that crystallized the idea for this post:
It is not impossible to imagine what Mann might have said if the dilemma of Sontag’s shame had been presented to him. He had long been brooding over the problem of the charismatic artist, over the hidden dangers of aesthetic cults. The topic floats through Sontag’s then favorite novel, “The Magic Mountain,” and it engulfs “Doctor Faustus,” the tale of a genius and a nation gone mad. Mann might have argued that there is not only a moral but also an artistic virtue in being outwardly boring and banal. It is a hedge against mania. The worship of greatness leads, at best, to disillusionment and, at worst, to the insanity unleashed by the Wagnerian Hitler. Every pilgrimage is suspect: Mann scorned the Wagner shrine in Bayreuth on those grounds. “Only for very young people,” he wrote, “are admiration and adoration the same thing.”
As much as The Magic Mountain awes me, my feelings towards Thomas Mann are more mundane: how did you come to write such a novel?
sch 4/9
Monday, August 10, 2026
Yesterday, I did the most walking I have done since the surgery. There was a baptism at 8:30. I made it almost to St. Barnabas on my own power. Then it was down and back to White River.
I napped for maybe two hours when I got back.
I spent the rest of the daydoing some revising “The Dead and Dying” novella. I made some changes - small ones - after the writing group on Wednesday. Those I did yesterday then added sections for a newer character that feature John B. Harvey and Albert Hyatt. I added one for Hyatt that involves Mike Devlin pulling him into politics. I found a publisher that will take novellas but has a 100 page bottom requirement. I hit 101 tonight.
No appetite. Not sure what that means.
One rejection received:
Dear Samuel,
Thank you for thinking of NewMyths. Unfortunately “The Unintended Consequences of Art” is not quite what we are looking for at this time. We wish you good luck placing it elsewhere.
Another day without much to talk about. I went to the convenience store twice. Nowhere else, though. I took one short nap. Why am I still so easily tired? Why is the still the same amount of discomfort? Small worries creep in.
Rejections:
8/7
Thank you for submitting to Exposition Review
Vol. XI: “PARA/SOCIAL.” This year we received a record-breaking number
of submissions, and we appreciate your patience while we gave each
piece the time and attention it deserved. We truly value your
submission and consider it an honor to read your work. Unfortunately, “Agnes” is not a fit for this issue. Since you indicated that you would
like feedback on your submission, we will send comments from our
editorial board along shortly.
We wish you the best of luck in your future writing endeavors and hope you will submit again!
While
never rising to the comic heights of Vonnegut, and without his more
overtly obvious moral lessons, these stories nonetheless have elements
that will be recognizable to his fans, and the straight faced delivery
of preposterous circumstances Moody presents will certainly be
appreciated by those who enjoy Charlie Kaufman or even Terry Gilliam.
Like Kaufman, Moody can verge on the allegorical and the surreal, and
like Gilliam, the visuals are often of our reality but with the volume
turned up on some of their more unsettling attributes.
Across
all five pieces included in the collection, Moody’s writing is
serviceable. He never quite swings for the fences when it comes to the
prose, but that’s probably a good thing in that he is already stretching
the imagination with the content he presents and doesn’t distract from
the heart of his stories with cumbersome or showy sentences. Readers who
need mimetic recreations of real life in order to find themselves drawn
into a story might struggle here, but those who can set aside their
nagging questions about how such things could be (or readers who prefer
to!) will enjoy playing in the melancholy, symbol laden worlds ofLost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds.
Being perverse, some of my characters do not transform positively.
But as I’ve come to recognize over the years, the Lie is not just a Lie. I’ve come to emphasize it specifically as a comparatively limited belief that exists in a continuum with a comparatively expansive Truth. Because here’s the thing: at the beginning of a story, the Lie starts out as the character’s Truth. To some degree, it was a Truth that worked for them up until the story begins.
***
And so, I would posit that the Lie a character overcomes really isn’t so much a wrong
belief they must correct (or at least not always and not at its deeper
levels). Rather, it is a fissure in consciousness—a place where the
conscious self is inhabiting an ego identity that has created separation
between its surface-level understanding and the deeper Truth of our
being.
I have been more interested in people making choices based on incomplete or incorrect information and then having to live with those choices. Well, that has been the subject of some of my short stories.
This may be why my stories keep getting rejected, and I should shift from wrong assumptions to lies.
First, we have the Lie as simply a mistaken belief or even an outright deception that must be seen through.
Second, we have the Lie as a point within a continuum from a comparatively limited perspective to a comparatively expanded perspective.
Both “Lie” and “Truth” are qualified here; they are not black and
white, good or bad. They are just reference points for where characters
may find themselves along the continuum at any point.
And third, we have this deeper understanding of the Lie as an ego identity or a comparatively limited consciousness. It is ultimately a separation
between the conscious self and the unconscious self. When we zoom back
from the minutiae of any specific character arc to look at the movement
of human growth, what we are really tracking is the larger expansion
that becomes possible as we release the limitations of our ego
identities, allowing us to embrace our capacity for deep alignment with
the truths of life.
Or stick to my guns and live with characters who do not transform into better selves but live and die by their choices. After all, Ahab does not transform into anything apart from fish food.
Other lies addressed in the article: The Lie the Character Believes as Separation and The Lie the Character Believes as Social Reality. Some additional notes for me, if not for you.
Although I dearly love the idea of character arc as being about transformation, I think this expanded model reveals it might be more accurate to instead think of character arc as being about coming into alignment. It’s less about a change to the character’s fundamental self and more about the removal
of the false self. It’s not the addition of a new perspective, but the
stripping away of what isn’t true so the character may see more clearly.
***
Ego identities are not simply personal. They are reinforced through
collective social consensus. Society itself can be seen as an ego
identity. In their seminal book, sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas
Luckmann posited that reality, as we think of it, is a social construction.
Customs and traditions are dictated by varying societies. That America
or Columbia or Italy are countries at all is a social convention.
Indeed, the conventions of language are a social construction, with
(mostly) agreed-upon rules.
Although we each, in our own small way, influence society, society
bears a tremendous influence upon our own ego identities—not just in how
we operate socially but also in how we understand ourselves internally.
Arguably, the vast majority of our ego identities are inherited. We all
entertain outer Lies (aka, limiting beliefs) about what we believe
reality to be and inner Lies about what we believe our identities within
that reality to be.
I wonder what my father would have made of A Dying Art by John Semley. He was an embalmer, he held himself to a high standard, and I expect he would be appalled.
I spent somewhere around 2 hours writing a query letter and synopsis for One Dead Blonde. I do not have much hope for it.
I find myself tired and dealing with insomnia this week. It has gotten in the way of reporting my days.
Last Saturday was my most active day out of the apartment. Laundry, the farmer's market, a quick lunch at Popeye's, and the car returned was the morning. I got back here around 1 PM. Then I found out my friend DM was in town for DWNTN Muncie. He and I grabbed lunch at the Downtown Farmstand. He agrees they have great pizza. That took up about two hours. I arrived here a bit achy.
I have photos that will appear in a separate post.
Sunday, I managed Liturgy but only Liturgy. A little weak doing all that standing, but also from the sitting and standing up.
I need to get out today. I seem to have lost my pants on Saturday. Confused by that.
I woke around one and went back to sleep around 5 AM and then back up around 10.
Emails and Star Trek Discovery dealt with.
I started a new short story.
Onto other things.
8/3
I went to the grocery, I think. Certainly to the convenience store. Watching Star Trek shows on YouTube.
8/4
I started this post.
Stayed put, a convenience store walk. Working on the MS.
Reminded last night of something unpleasant: Murder of Sylvia Likens. This I did not know about until my forties. One may smile and smile and be a villain indeed.
8/5
I meant to spend the day out. All I did was get to the writer's group and in the evening to Walmart.
These days, the writerly lone wolf is more a myth than it is a reality.
Most of today’s celebrated authors are trained in the profession and
their qualification is the MFA (master of fine arts). Percival Everett received his from Brown, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
studied at Johns Hopkins University, and Jhumpa Lahiri went to Boston.
Great writers, now, are less rare animals discovered in the wild and
more elite thoroughbreds, meticulously trained and set up for the race
ahead.
But is it a good thing?
While the idea that the workshop is de facto a magical, hermeneutic
space where mediocre writing turns into something great is a lie, it can
be a tool. For the most part my workshops were generous and generative
spaces where people read plentifully and with grace. A writer who is
forced to confront her work regularly through the eyes of others must
think about what it is she wants to write and why, and this inevitably
leads to writing that is more thoughtful and ambitious. Of course,
learning who to listen to is a skill in itself.
One rejection came with a critique and a recommendation to workshop my story. Okay, could it be that workshopping also offloads editorial work?
What seems to be the consensus is that an MFA teaches you style as opposed to soul. A focus on craft, on how to
write, creates automatons who can turn a good phrase, but whose writing
is stripped of something essential. Pulitzer prize-winning Robert Olen
Butler, interviewed by Edward J Delaney for the Atlantic, sums it up:
“creative-writing students, who are typically trained almost exclusively
in craft and technique […] don’t know the first thing about [being an
artist].” Jo Ann Beard told me she could recognise an Iowa Writer’s
Workshop graduate anywhere. There was something honed, particular and
controlled in the writing. Perhaps the imprint MFAs have had on fiction
feels more forceful at a time when the gulf between literary and popular
fiction has never been wider. Do MFAs guard the ivory tower of literary
fiction while “untrained” writers produce popular fiction for the
masses? Or more generously, do MFAs protect a dying art?
While
it is true that spending hours in a classroom under the influence of
certain teachers can create similarities in style among a cohort, in my
classes students submitted widely: magical realism, noir, historical,
auto-fiction. They had epic aspirations.
Yet
there is a sense that contemporary fiction conforms to a similar style.
Is this because MFAs encourage that? I’m not sure. Or is it rather the
influence of narrow trends, which force certain books into the public
eye at certain times. That many of the most popular authors today have
MFAs, and that those novels might have a similar style or focus on a
similar subject is a bit like saying fire engines cause fires.
But a shared education may implicate a shared philosophy. Or it could be a shared culture beyond the MFA program creates a shared world view, or just a shared set of cultural touchstones. What I write about seems to be slightly outside what MFA writers latch upon.
You can drive yourself crazy trying to say exactly how an MFA influences
writing, and whether it is worth it. The truth is, an MFA isn’t a magic
pill. It’s much harder to pastiche a style than you think; spending
hours on anything takes stamina. Doing an MFA puts you in a rigorous
environment for several years where, hopefully, you can learn how best you write. As Everett put it in Brown’s alumni magazine: “Brown allowed me to really just be who I am and just work.”
Structurally, The Bacchae and Suddenly Last Summer are
dominated by two key monologues, and, specifically, Violet’s and
Catharine’s monologues turn Sebastian into the subject of a performed
drama. “Sebastian himself, of course, exists only within the competing
dramatic accounts of Catharine and Violet,” says Morra. “These
expressions are themselves contained within a work that calls continuous
attention to itself as drama, vehemently anti-realist and
self-consciously subjective. The play refrains from staging or
confirming the violence of Sebastian’s demise; even more so than The Bacchae, it contains its narrative at the level of language rather than action.”
If writing descriptions intimidates you, consider breaking the concept down to just remaining mindful. Reflect on what the protagonist is thinking, feeling, and perceiving as they advance through a scene, whether or not you know the “perfect” language to describe that. Then, it will be up to you to decide which of these details are most relevant to convey the tone you’d like a scene to have. Including each of the five senses all at once is rarely necessary—in fact, doing so will work against you by reducing the impact that your words have—so be sure to prioritize what feels like it best fits the moment.
***
A complete lack of description, on the other hand, isolates the reader from the characters, environment, and plotline that they’re meant to bond with by leaving them in the figurative dark. If the reader is given no visuals, sounds, scents, or other details to ground them in a narrative, very little remains for them to connect with to envision our scenes as real. Dialogue and exposition alone, while both incredibly valuable skills for writers, cannot reach their full potential without the aid of description, and the same may be said vice versa.
***
With all of the above in mind, it’s also vital to remember not to rely solely and excessively on description to elevate our writing. Doing so is often referred to as writing purple prose, which many readers prefer to avoid, making it a distinctly unflattering label to have attributed to our narratives. Similarly, utilizing an abundance of repetitive descriptions may begin to fall into the territory of cliché. Because of this, it’s necessary to be mindful of how our descriptive writing works alongside other storytelling aspects like pacing and dialogue, as depending too heavily on descriptions may lead us to neglect equally necessary skills.
Untranslatable Food Words (Vittles) there is something here, even if it is only a reminder of language's limits.
Thank you so much for your submission to the Submission Pit’s July ‘26 window.
I regret to inform you that your short story did not win this month but fear not! You’re more than happy to submit for August immediately.
And don’t forget to subscribe to the Submission Pit Substack below if you haven’t already.
Also if you have had a recently published short story elsewhere (or forthcoming) feel free to let us know about it and we'll give you a special shout out in next month's statistics post.
8/3:
Thank you for trusting us with "Agnes." After a close reading, we've decided that the story isn't the the right fit for us at this time.
Sincerely,
StoryBottle Co
8/4:
Thank you for letting us consider "Pieces About A Small Indiana Factory
Town, 1976 – 1984" for publication in the Missouri Review. We enjoyed
reading your work, and though it doesn't quite fit our needs at this
time, we wish you excellent luck with it and hope we will have the
chance to read more of your writing in the future.
I made it to group on Friday. My legs got wobbly. I took the bus there and back, as little walking as possible. I stayed put for the rest of the day. Did some reading, watched shows on Netflix. Right now I cannot recall what it was! Thusday Murder Club.
Got a rejection.
Thank you for sharing "Pieces About A Small Indiana Factory, 1976 - 1984" with A Public Space. We regret that we are unable to use this piece for the magazine, but appreciate the opportunity to consider it.
I keep having these intense moments of insomnia. Those I have used to work on my research project.
CC called again on Friday. I spoke with KH, too. Joel C called with compliments for “Ahab in the Moonlight”. That is now published. I need to get a link here to it.
Saturday, I went to Payless and the convenience store twice. A little more walking, a little more of my research project.
I started watching Orphan Black on Netflix. I like it.Oh, I started Bugonia and just could not take its deepness or weirdness. Looks good, though.
I decided against church. Not enough energy, pain is more a low-level discomfort.
One thing decided: a different working schedule. I need to get some books read.
Things read over the past few days that I want to share:
No Longer Human comprises a series of notebooks
by a formerly “handsome young man”, who declares his incompatibility
with the human race. For him, the world is “a place of bottomless
horror”; he concludes that “living itself is the source of sin”. The
narrator of the title story of Schoolgirl takes a similar view: “the
problem is that I’m corrupt. I’m a bad girl.”
The
relentless pessimism in Dazai’s work risks seeming overwhelming or
indulgent but, as Barton puts it, Dazai “leans into [the self-loathing]
with a kind of exuberance”. Indeed, his appeal in part lies in this
“unashamed emotional quality, but also tempered with enormous
intelligence”.
Whitehead initially envisioned the Harlem Trilogy as a jaunty
entertainment, a break from the serious Pulitzer-winning business of The
Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys. Cool Machine specifically
covers the New York of his youth, a scene he experienced first-hand,
which only adds to the air of vivid, freewheeling fun. Whitehead maps
the streets, labels the landmarks and dips in at intervals with handy
background information. He takes a dark and dangerous corner of history
and makes it feel illuminated, magnified, even borderline
family-friendly.
Revisionist? Well, it certainly takes us to wintry and sombre ponderings
on the movies’ (perennial) tendency to coarsen and to cheapen, to
enforce cultural mob-rule. He cites King Vidor’s 1928 film The Crowd,
starring James Murray, a former extra plucked from the ranks and groomed
for glory but whose awful destiny was to descend into alcoholism and
homelessness – back into the crowd. He emphasises movies’ amazing
populist-democratic power and reach, their power embodied by the fact
that, unlike in the theatre or concert hall, a film’s action could not
be stopped or affected by the crowd in front of it. Like a theologian
dragged by doubts to the foot of the cross, Thomson wonders if the
movies will always lack literature’s way of allowing us to enlarge our
imaginations, as opposed to forcing a submission to the screen.
As the report notes, immigrants from countries like Haiti, Mexico,
the Dominican Republic, Uganda, Jamaica, the Philippines, and dozens of
others make up the majority of people who serve the aging, frail, sick,
disabled and dying. These immigrants “bathe their clients, change adult
diapers, supervise medications, and provide companionship in
relationships that are intimate as well as professional.” And they are
the targets of Donald Trump’s hatred.
Recuperating from surgery on Tuesday, so still a little rocky. My brain
is not in the mood for extended exgesis. Take the following for what
they are worth.
This vivid lyricism calls to mind other Irish writers such as Paul Lynch or Sara Baume (Patch and his dog, in particular, echo Baume’s gorgeous debut Spill Simmer Falter Wither). Looking farther afield, the reading experience resembles that of Samantha Harvey’s Booker-winning Orbital, where another handful of individual lives and private concerns are set against a vast and sublime beauty – only this time we are not up in the heavens, but down in the dirt. Just as with Harvey’s novel, some readers of The Red Mouth might bemoan the lack of dialogue or explicit plot. There are no big epiphanies: time unfolds in quiet increments; new losses are accrued; mysteries are set up only to remain unanswered. However, as Brigit, one of Fleming’s daughters, comes to realise, such is life: “things happen, one after the other, and there is no smooth parabolic curve that can connect all the checkpoints … uncertainty is the only certainty”. In Armstrong’s meditative and profound novel, such uncertainty, so exquisitely rendered, is more than enough to sustain us to the end.
In the tradition of Angela Carter, Marina Warner, Emma Donoghue and Helen Oyeyemi, Blackie wants to reclaim these stories from the Disneyfication of the past century. Many of the heroines in her books would rather throw a frog at a wall than kiss one, and are “very much more likely to rescue than be rescued”. The heroine’s journey is one of young women discovering their agency through courage, grit and wit.
Blackie is determined to push back against the wicked stepmother and evil-witch tropes, to restore the “wise old woman” to her rightful place at the heart of society. Frustrated that all the well-known mythical women belong to Greek and Roman legends – “raped left, right and centre, and always secondary to men” – she set out to explore the Celtic folklore of her half-Irish, half-Scottish ancestry. “I discovered all these different ways of being a really interesting and useful old woman,” she says. “Why does nobody know about them?”
Her favourite mythical being is the Cailleach (“old woman” or hag in Scottish and Irish Gaelic), associated with winter and wilderness and as old as the land itself. “A very powerful role model for the challenges we face today,” she says. But the Selkie, a seal woman who is stranded out of water and has her skin stolen, or the miller’s daughter, whose father cut off her hands and must regrow them, are rich metaphors for her own story and for female narratives in general. Rebirth, transformation and renewal – the message of Blackie’s books is clear: be ready for “the Call”, which is most likely to come when you fear your story might be over.
But "dude," "man," and "bro" are a specific type of vocative known as "familiarizers."
Familiarizers mark a relationship as casual and provide social nuance
beyond their attention-getting function. Their true power lies in how
they help perform interactional work
like signaling closeness or commiseration, expressing or softening
disagreement, and managing conversational turns. Consider the different
relational messages being delivered by the "bro" used in "Bro, you ate
my pizza!" versus the one in "I love you too, bro."
