Birds chirping means good government
rolling thunder means trouble
5:30 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.
Many things that I won’t tell you about happened. And I wrote a long essay that made me feel a bit bad, although it had some okay lines, including:
…a dessert trolly was rolled to the table when it was time to decide between the always disappointing creme brulee, a punishing slab of chocolate cake, or a little plate of profiteroles, which were the best thing to order because of their name but they looked like they might be fake food from a Beatrix Potter dollhouse lived in by real mice with aprons.
8:34 a.m.
One of my best friends in the world is back in town, just blocks away, after being on the other hemisphere of this planet for a year and a half. He got the bagels we left on their doorstep and his toddler enjoyed them. This makes me feel so happy and also restores my faith in actions, everyday objects, and airplanes.
They’ve returned on the prettiest day in over a year. Already, leafy trees are trembling under a bright blue sky, as if to say, Take that, New Zealand.
Noon
It really couldn’t be prettier than it is right now. A robin is hopping along the sidewalk in front of me and he has something, I think a folded earthworm, in his beak. I don’t have any sympathy for the worm.
I’m sitting on my front steps in the sun. Honeybees and carpenter bees bigger than earpods are dancing and dive bombing around me steadily, and the backs of my hands are getting hot and brown as I type. I’m waiting for Marshall and Mary to return home with lunch. Mary’s redheaded flute teacher, a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, just walked by with her rescue dog, who has finally grown calm enough for the flute teacher to pause on walks and exchange pleasantries. We discuss music camp this summer and the vaccine for kids under 16 coming available soon.
The overall feeling is, by the sound of the cars and the chimes and the birds and the breeze rustling in every tree, that we are all taking it easy, the entire world. Or at least this town, right now. It can’t just be me. Now someone is mowing.
1:20
I am nearing the finish line of my current editing project, a book of short fiction translated from Korean. What a treat, to make something better while also learning things about North Korea, about propaganda in the guise of literary fiction, about the art of translation…
In particular, it’s interesting to see that bad writers are alike wherever you go.
And I include myself in this (at least sometimes). They hammer you over the head, telling you one thing five different ways. They shamelessly use nature—descriptions of birdsong or dark clouds or ripples of light upon the surface of a river—to lend their political judgements more weight, as if the very forces of nature are conspiring to agree and punctuate importance of fealty to the humble working people and Our Great Republic. Get my pretty name out of your mouth, I imagine the river saying to the propagandist.
This is similar to something good writers do all the time too, of course—use trees and skies and weather. What’s the difference?
Degree of originality in the descriptions
How well they hide their attempts to manipulate the reader (so, sleight of hand basically)
What it is exactly that they are selling (romance, a dictatorship, reverence for life, a dumb idea or a good one, etcetera)
5:11
I’ve dropped my daughter off for a bus trip to her first ever track and field meet!
I’ve taught a private art lesson to a delightful girl in a woodland backyard next to a babbling brook.
I’ve edited 15 more pages of translated fiction.
Maybe I’ll stop writing about pretty nature things altogether for a while! It is starting to seem cheap.
How to distance your writing from propaganda
Mention random things, impressionistically, things that can’t possibly be code for “Do what the state tells you to do.”
Don’t have clear good guys and bad guys, or don’t be so concerned about who is good or bad.
Don’t try to counterbalance reality with throbbing evidence of the contrary—humble dictators, garbage collectors who are towering moral giants and philosophical geniuses, factories that are practically spiritual centers, and fish that are downright grateful to be caught by deserving fishermen, that kind of thing.
5:55
I’ve chatted with the neighbor who has sold his house for more than he was asking and is moving to a smaller house in a quieter part of town. “When we moved here, the street was full of young people. Now you and your family I think are the youngest,” he told me. He’s not counting all the graduate student renters on our block.
Someone is using a circular saw next door. Tree branch shadows temporarily batik the blinds on my dining room windows. It’s the latest it can be and still be afternoon.
It was a good day, but I’m not sure what that means yet. My bra is too tight. So grateful to our Great Leaders for making it possible for me and my friends to make vaccination appointments for our 13-year-olds this week.
Write to me! I’ll write you back.
Coming next…
Republican rhizomes, drawings of dogs, the ideal wedding celebration, and an interview with a former priest who is now a shop teacher—how does religion seep into his homework assignments?