Saturday morning: scanning the Globe Books section and the Chronicle Herald. Great to see Lezlie Lowe as a regular Herald columnist, her commentary on the Truro mayor's gay-bashing. And on the religion page a piece by a journalism student on the conflict between Capitalism and Christianity. Then, in the Globe, a review of Elizabeth Gilbert's new memoir about the scariness of saying "I do". The need, in all three scenarios, for commitment to compassion. Caritas.
I admire Gilbert and other such memoirists their ability to write so blatantly of their own lives and feelings. Words are a wonderful way of processing personal fodder, but, frankly, the thought of such direct commentary gives me the willies. I always prefer to take the fictional leap into the imaginary drop-off, and to stretch what presents itself to me into the minds and hearts of other people: characters.
A different kind of honesty, perhaps, but from the same place.
The hardest thing about writing, I tell students, is saying exactly what you mean. Sometimes (a lot of times?) we're not even sure what that is ourselves. Writing is a pretty good way of finding out; but then it's finding the right words.
Writing is the place, maybe, where our true feelings and what we would aspire to believe occasionally meet.
A point of double vision: our humble and higher selves conversing.
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