Keats, Severn, Nocturne - Helen Humphreys

"In that room where there was no writing and no reading, Severn sketched the dying man, in fact made some of the finest drawings of the poet when he was on his deathbed. Perhaps Severn's sketching was a comforting presence to Keats. Art, although no longer of urgent relevance to his world, would have been his familiar. 

Severn, afraid that he'd fall asleep one night and that Keats would wake to darkness and think that he had died, devised a system so that the poet would have continuous light. He fastened a piece of thread from the bottom of one candle to the wick of another, and in its guttering state the dying flame would ignite the thread and travel up it to ignite the wick of the next candle. 

It is said that John Keats awoke at the exact moment the flame was travelling up the thread from one candle to another, and that in his excitement at witnessing the spectacle, he woke Severn to tell him of the success of his invention. 

At the end, we are all far from home. We are far from home, and what we hope for is that someone will fashion us a light, so that we will not have to wake in darkness."

                                                   ~ Helen Humphreys, Nocturne

Hemingway - A Moveable Feast

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.

Vintage Book Covers - Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road

“It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

Trees and Hermann Hesse

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them."

~ Herman Hesse

Christmas For Writerly Sorts

Premium loot for writers and readers and anyone, really: 

Psychic Distance and the Novel

I've been spending a fair amount of time working through the "psychic distance" of my narrator in my novel this past month. Not a topic I've specifically considered in the past, but now that it's on my radar it's difficult to read someone else's work without noting its value in a narrative.

Disclaimer: psychic distance is not about Dionne Warwick or The Amazing Kreskin. It is about the placement of your narrator in a story, where they stand in relation to a character, what information they are privy to. It links to who the narrator is and from when they are speaking from. More importantly it identifies a line of sight for the reader.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Not all lies are morally wrong. At the Barber's this past week, a tubby, mouth-breathing hair-cutter in his 50's asks me what I do.

He asks me this while he fiddles with his iPad before moving to his iPhone for extra fiddling. The plastic poncho for my shoulders almost forgotten when he picks up his scissors.

I tell him what I do...and immediately - before he even responds - swallow a strong instinct to bolt. This guy is not my usual barber. He's a horrible facsimile of a barber. In fact, he may not even be a barber. What if he's a Larper?

I notice a poorly inked yin-yang tattoo on his forearm. Are Daoists offended by bad yin-yang tattoos?

On the Subject of Fathers

In an interview a few years back, the big yin, Billy Connolly spoke about his tormented upbringing, outlined in a biography written by his psychotherapist wife, Pamela Stephenson--a book about healing more than anything else. 

The abuse was terrible: abandonment, sexual, violence. But in the interview--which covered far more than his tumultuous upbringing--he was adamant about not harboring resentment about his past, nor being portrayed as a victim.

When asked about his father, who sexually abused him for several years, Connolly spoke on forgiveness, and how it allowed him to continue to love his father now as he did growing up. How the betrayal that occurred was not the dominant feature of how he saw his dad.

The interview was remarkable to me because of how difficult forgiveness comes to many (myself included at times). How easy it is to carry resentment deep in your gut and allow it to color the way you see the world. Especially when it stems from such scarring trauma.

My life in comparison to Mr. Connolly's is almost innocuous. I had caring parents who did their best to raise four children. My father worked too hard for too little and that made him tired and short-tempered. But there was never any doubt that he was dedicated to his family--that the lack he felt in his own upbringing would not carry over into the one he helped create.

He wasn't perfect--wasn't easy to please. But he was and is a great teacher. Even today, kids gravitate towards him, his strange and silly humor, his willingness to engage with them at their level. And his capacity to forgive and not be tied down by resentment is paramount to this.

It's difficult to place value on these traits, but when I look at my daughter--the single greatest achievement of our lives--I know I take these traits to heart. Somewhere, in the convoluted world of parenting, I know a few things will stand true.

John Steinbeck and Setting

Been thinking about setting a lot lately, especially in my own work. I'm also reading Steinbeck's Once There Was a War which is providing a lot of necessary musing. Setting, or at least its implementation in a story, can be tricky at times--but it seems to have a direct relation to the believability of a character. A way to make them more present.

I tend to use setting as a means to convey an immediate context for a protagonist's actions. Generally, my stories take place in the same town--an older, darker version of where I grew up. I establish social lines and divisions, often using the town's geography and physical landscape as a way to make them more believable. Whether that works or not is up for grabs.

But setting is not just geography or weather or texture. It is also comprised of the social structure within it, the interaction, beliefs, and idiosyncrasies of its inhabitants.

I don't think a writer can afford to take setting for granted. One cannot simply announce the city in which characters are interacting and expect a comprehensive knowledge from the reader. I find a precise picture is necessary, with intentional details with an agenda (though the agenda can be ambiguous at first). At least that's what I gravitate towards.

An overlapping commentary on how setting relates seems to help as well. Washington Ave. may be full of gangs, but knowing their motivations (for at least some of them) helps prevent the sense of broad-stroke generalizing.

Steinbeck's non-fiction accounts of his experiences during the Second World War bring it together nicely for me. In particular, a description and summary of the people of Dover (small UK town facing France along the narrowest point of the English Channel):

Dover, with its castle on the hill and its crooked streets, its big, ugly hotels and its secret and dangerous offensive power, is closest of all to the enemy. Dover is full of memory of Wellington and of Napoleon, of the time when Napoleon came down to Calais and looked across the Channel at England and knew that only this little stretch of water interrupted his conquest of the world.

Then Hitler came to the hill above Calais and looked across at the cliffs, and again only the stretch of water stopped the conquest of the world. It is a very little piece of water. On the clear days you can see the hills about Calais, and with a glass you can see the clock tower of Calais. When the guns of Calais fire you cans see the flash, while with the telescope you can see from the castle the guns themselves, and even the tanks deploying on the beach.

There is a quality in the people of Dover that may well be the key to the coming German disaster. They are incorrigibly, incorruptibly unimpressed. The German, with his uniform and his pageantry and his threats and plans, does not impress these people at all. The Dover man has taken perhaps a little more pounding than most, not in great blitzes, but in every-day bombing and shelling, and still he is not impressed.

Jerry is like the weather to him. He complains about it and then promptly goes about what he was doing. Nothing in the world is as important as his garden and, in other days, his lobster pots. Weather and Jerry are alike in that they are inconvenient and sometimes make messes. Surveying a building wrecked by a big shell, he says, "Jerry was bad last night," as he would discuss a windstorm.

A Meeting With Joel Thomas Hynes

Met Joel Thomas Hynes today and had a nice chat about writing. The guy is as stand-up as they get. No bullshit with him and if you've read Down to the Dirt you know he's from a rough side of the tracks and unlikely to coddle you when you sit down with him.

What I like about meeting people like him, people with hard, knuckle and bone pasts, is how perceptive they are about others. Not to mention how much empathy they often have for humanity in general. A universal acceptance not always evident from those of us with less-difficult upbringings.

Before we met he read several pages of my latest project, tailoring his advice to what he saw. It appears I'm on the right track (whatever that is), but I thought I'd mention a few suggestions he offered--at least this is how I understood them:

1) Write your ending and paste it into the body of your piece--no matter where you are in the story. Even if the ending changes by the time you're finished, write it into the story anyways. Why? Because it marks an end point, a goal to progress towards.

Writing a story is not always a linear process, so write the ending down as soon as you have an idea of what it is. If you have it and the beginning, you essentially have your story. What is left is bridging the gaps in between.

2) When you get bogged down, try changing POV. Move to 1st person for awhile, even if the rest of the story is told in 3rd. Perception is key--not just how your protagonist perceives others, but also how others perceive him/her.

Often helps flesh a story out, by incorporating the viewpoints of several characters, perhaps making a particular event more (or less) reliable by revealing it through the eyes of many instead of just one.

3) Pare down every sentence to the bare essentials. Man I know I need to work on this more. Consider each sentence and reduce it.

4) Play on the readers' emotions and fears. Whatever you're working on, there will be people who identify (for good or ill) with what your story is conveying. Work with that, make the story use this potential to your advantage. Not pandering to the reader per se but realizing the emotional connection. The trick is to avoid the sentimental or melodramatic. Easier said than done.

5) Find your real title. Seriously. It should embody your entire work down to a few words. I'm working on this right now and it's proving to be more difficult than I anticipated. It also makes me wonder--especially when I look at some book titles on shelves--how many people don't spend enough time on this.

General advice, in some regards, but important I think. Check out some of Hynes' work, if you're interested:

Down to the Dirt
Right Away Monday
Down to the Dirt (film)

J.D. Salinger in the New Yorker

Yes, he's dead. Not that it makes much difference when you think about it. For a man who disappeared from view--at least in the "I want to be with my adoring fans sense"--decades ago, and whose writing disappeared with him, people sure make a fuss.

But that's not to say he couldn't write. Hell, even if you don't like The Catcher in the Rye, you can't take away from its impact on American culture--its ability to speak to the disillusioned on a massive scale. I assume Salinger lived off of the income from this one book alone, as it continues to sell thousands of copies every year.

If you want to see what else he wrote, you're better off heading over to the New Yorker's JD Salinger Archives, where he published thirteen short stories from 1945-1961. I haven't read through them all yet, but it's always a treat when rarities are posthumously offered for public consumption.

I'm sure Salinger would have consulted his lawyers already, trying to find a way to prevent such an affront to his good name--which is what he seemed to consider any effort to circulate his work.

But what a way to create demand. Tell the masses they can't have something and that's precisely what they scramble to get. And you have to admire a man who carried so much disdain for those who wanted what he had to offer. Can you imagine writing something like Catcher and then dealing with the continuous aftermath of disenfranchised youths making pilgrimages to your front door? I'd become a recluse too.

Or maybe that's part of the myth. There are plenty of accounts that indicate Salinger was not the recluse the rest of the world wanted him to be. He probably just got sick and damn tired of being hounded--maybe felt his work was being exploited somehow (I don't know). So he became solitary, which is cool. He wasn't a jerk or a hermit. People in his town knew him--and protected him too. It's an important distinction: solitary vs. seclusion.

But none of that matters now.

Last Call for 2009: Film, Music, and Books

No way I can post any definitive lists this year. Raising a 2 year old does not allow for a ton of free time. There were so many films I didn't get to see and most of my viewing was spent catching up on what I missed in 2008.

But I did catch a few great ones. Heard a few brilliant albums. Read a few outstanding books.

Books (None from 'o9; just ones I read this year)

1) Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Posits humor, sex, and some damn fine philosophy into a great humanist piece. His Theodicy of Shit is brilliant.
2) Cormac McCarthy, Suttree - A god of prose, McCarthy's characters and settings shudder with a deep sadness. Consistent with his other books, the always-present theme of human choice.
3) Erik Larson, The Devil In the White City - Big surprise for me. Non-fiction paced like fiction. Larson comprises a narrative arc by showing the connection between one of America's defining moments in history (Chicago World's Fair) and also its first serial killer.
4) John Steinbeck, The Pearl - Steinbeck re-creates old Mexican folklore and puts together some impressive mythology. Great descriptions with his usual grasp for story.
5) Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Unlike anything I've read before. Murakami plays with chronology and dual-realities without traipsing into silly fantasy. Subtle at times, but always with the tension of beauty and violence.

Film

1) The Road - Hillcoat's astonishing recreation of McCarthy's novel is only overshadowed by Viggo's acting.
2) State of Play - Great dialogue, pacing, story-lines. Intelligent political commentary.
3) District 9 - Sharlto Copely put on the acting job of the year, in my books. Plays with themes of identity and refugee and manages to foster real empathy for CGI aliens. Worth every penny.
4) Coraline - What happens when Pixar takes a tab of acid. Dark, luminous story-telling with gorgeous effects. Stop-motion animation at its finest.
5) Two Lovers - A sedate, strangely realistic romantic film that focuses more on human decision than trying to manufacture a pretty ending. Some great ambiguity here.

Music

1) Mastodon, Crack the Skye - Moody and progressive with great story-telling. Avoids most "metal" cliche--not to mention the best album art in the past decade.
2) Pearl Jam, Backspacer - Great form that hints at their earlier work without sounding immature.
3) Magneta Lane, Gambling With God - An example of Canadian Arts Council funding going somewhere worthwhile. The lead singer's voice somehow bridge's the gap between two vastly different eras of female vocals.
4) Baroness, Blue Album - In the same vein as Mastodon. Well crafted, ambient metal that borders on being literary.
5) Alice in Chains, Black Gives Way to Blue - heavy, morose, and with a new vocalist that seems up to the task, though likely forever singing in someone else's shadow.

The Road - It's Finally Here

A great piece of fiction, for me, is gauged by how effectively it devastates. This not only comprises of story and character, but how the piece speaks to the human condition, the bonds between persons, the metaphysical and existential questions surrounding existence. And, of course, prose.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road cuts to the quick. Dark, harrowing, unrelenting in its grief and hope. I read it right after my daughter's birth, in two days, often with her curled up asleep on my lap. This book is very much a love-story.

A great director like John Hillcoat (his The Proposition is a must-see) ensures a certain loyalty to the source material, and a refusal to engage in the sentimental. The cast is immense and capable, the few trailers I have seen look rightfully grim. But what no director can capture, especially in the context of a writer like McCarthy, is the texture that comes from prose.

Nonetheless, I'll be damned if I don't see this film half a dozen times before the year is up---just to be sure.

More The Road Info

Advice to Writers: Read Poetry

I've been told over and over, if you want to be a great writer--not good, but bloody great--you have to read poetry. Or at least sit close to poets every now and then. So, I try.

Case in point: an evening with Aislinn Hunter and Miranda Pearson where each launched a new book. Great readings, but I would need several hours to write on both. So I'm only going to tackle one.

Aislinn's latest, A Peepshow with Views of the Interior: Paratext, is a diverse, thoughtful collection of essays on our understanding of and relationship to objects in the material world.

For the record, I don't think I've ever conversed with a more intelligent person than Aislinn. Her ability to listen and respond in a sincere, informed way often leaves me breathless--if not a little intimidated. And this is evident in her new book.

A Peepshow... displays her wealth of knowledge, her understanding of philosophy and how it pertains to the world around us. Experimental in its forms--using everything from poetry to footnotes as a creative medium, but never lacking clarity--I consider the essays imperative for every writer, or artist for that matter.

A quote from the book:

Few of us have the stomach for obliteration. We want some semblance of our having-been to reel out behind us. Want to see oneself seen. This is the conundrum of the rock garden: raking the stones to erase our footsteps but taking comfort in the tracks of the rake. How it takes a storm to come and shuttle the stones into a place that bears no trace of us. Truth of the matter is we cannot begin to say something from the void of nothing. That was the first lie: In the beginning was the word. No: In the beginning was Form. An utterance needs a body to speak to or speak from. As for the dead, they become formless, but leave a trail of pebbles behind them.

Another item worth noting--and a testament to both Aislinn's and Miranda's apparent sincerity-- a few of their students also came forward and read from their own works. My good friend, Nelia Botelho, and a fellow student Kistie Singh were among the readers, and both were in great form.

Nelia and Kistie each compiled related poems from their own collections into respective chapbooks. Great-looking books with impressive poetry within. Nelia in particular (not to take away from Kistie) impressed me greatly. A poem from her chapbook, Undone:

Autumn

Autumn reveals itself
In the skins of split fruits,
the burden of berries,
in the crackle of cornhusk
gilded in senescent light
the dry curled hollows of a husk unfurl
as scrolls before a great revelation

Autumn defines itself
in the silhouettes of crows
perched on pumpkins' thick ginger hulls,
whose sable feathers fold
like pious hands,

and in the stitched burlap
of a scarecrow's lips,
the vigilant eyes.

I think Nelia has a few chapbooks left if someone wants to purchase one. $7 (includes shipping), if you email her at: neliabotelho(at)shaw.ca

Miranda Pearson's latest is called, Harbour, and focuses on a person's drive to create territory in whatever space available. Look for it.

Climate Cover-Up

Those of you who haven't visited DeSmogBlog.com should do so. A great site that works with diligence to source out and debunk the host of lobbyist-funded climate change skeptics causing confusion in the world of media.

Chances are you've come across a host of them. If you're at all skeptical about climate change, you've been suckered in. Any and all climate scientists will tell you that dramatic change is happening to our climate, and we have something to do with it.

Anything else is carefully-planned confusion by big energy groups who stand to lose a ton of money.

A new book called, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, exposes the global-warming denial campaign in vicious, irrefutable fashion. This book isn't some silly bit of finger-waving by activists, but a concise, well-researched (thanks in large part to my friend, Kevin Grandia) piece of journalism by people who have been immersed in the PR industry for decades.

These people are qualified to call shit...well, shit.

Here's a quote from a review of Climate Cover-Up in The Vancouver Sun:

"Climate Cover-up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is a remarkable deconstruction of what he (Hoggan) argues is a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign whose goal is to set the agenda in climate policy by discrediting legitimate science and manipulating public perceptions of the scientific evidence.

This isn't a book about the science behind global warming scenarios, it's an analysis by a well-informed insider of how the debate was skilfully framed by public relations experts to call that science into question, exploit the media's weakness for a good controversy and ultimately to sow confusion and doubt in the public's mind."

Should Book Titles Warrant Capital Punishment?

In line at the local drug store, I made the perilous mistake of scanning the book shelves next to the tight-lipped cashier and her green fingernails. Poor girl needed to use the bathroom, I think.

Best sellers, apparently. And the titles, oh the titles...sweet mother of Mary, the titles. Enough to make a grown man want to chew his own elbow. All under the auspicious banner of "mass-market fiction", which I quickly looked up online to find even more gems. Let us consider...

1) From Dead to Worse
2) Club Dead
3) Dead as a Doornail
4) Dead Until Dark

I should note, all these come from the same author, all on the bestsellers. Kaching! But I digress...

5) Altogether Dead
6) Definitely Dead

Uh...still same author. I need to get more creative.

7) Heat Seeker (no euphemism there)

Uh oh...

8) Dead to The World (you guessed it...same author as 1-6)

I'll think I'll stop here. I'm feeling a little...

Cormac McCarthy - A Lesson in Dialogue

Out of my league and unable to articulate the immensity that is Cormac McCarthy, I'll simply post two excerpts: one a snippet of dialogue from the overwhelming Suttree, the other a segment from an impressive essay re: McCarthy's focus on the paradoxical choices in his character's day-to-day lives.

Dialogue:
Two men stand in front of a watermelon patch, late at night, from which a third has recently fled.

Two pairs of brogans went along the rows.
You ain't goin to believe this.
Knowin' you for a born liar I most probably wont.
Somebody has been fuckin' my watermelons.
What?
I said somebody has been...
No. No. Hell no. Damn if you aint got a warped mind.
I'm tellin' you...
I don't want to hear it.
Looky here.

They went along the outer row of the melonpatch. He stopped to nudge a melon with his toe. Yellowjackets snarled in the seepage. Some were ruined a good time past and lay soft with rot, wrinkled with imminent collapse.

It does look like it, dont it?
I'm tellin ye I seen him. I didnt know what the hell was goin on when he dropped his drawers. Then when I seen what he was up to I still didnt believe it. But yonder he lay.
What do you aim to do?
Hell, I dont know. It's about too late to do anything. He's damn near screwed the whole patch. I don't see what he couldn't of stuck to just one. Or a few.
Well, I guess he takes himself for a lover. Sort of like a sailer in a whorehouse.

From the essay: Cormac McCarthy's Paradox of Choice by Scott Esposito for The Quarterly Conversation.

From the very beginning, McCarthy has been an author fascinated by the give-and-take between modern-day humans and the multiple systems they are exposed to in day-to-day life. These systems react potently with McCarthy’s other great novelistic concern: the alienated individual and his ultimate recognition (with McCarthy it is invariable a he) that no one can stand outside of human society, and that our codes and bureaucracies decide for us far more often than we actually decide for ourselves. McCarthy’s novels are built around the rare moments of genuine decision-making when the swell and swirl of the world pulls back to relinquish agency to the individual.

In this way, the work of Cormac McCarthy strikes deep into the heart of American literature, as his books are always rooted in that most American of themes: the search for identity. In McCarthy it is often seen as an obsession with borders: of personal identity, of physical place, and of spiritual position within an existential realm of conflicting value systems.

In exploring these borders, McCarthy has carved out what is perhaps a unique place in all of American letters; he has overseen the decline of a traditional way of life in the American South while also personalizing and reframing the rise and fall of the romanticized American West. His protagonists, so similar and yet so different, have revealed the overlap between what are generally understood as two discrete historical phenomena. And in his final novel to date, McCarthy has even showed an ability to project these typical concerns into purely speculative territory, to improbably yet powerfully fuse his earthy immediacy with the lightness of fantasy. Throughout all of this, McCarthy is grounded by his interest in moments of choice and their attendant moral consequences.

Ben Affleck's Book Picks

Alright, I get ridiculed enough already for thinking highly of this guy. I mean, let's face it, he's made some dumb-ass movie choices over the years--as far as artistic quality is concerned. But a recent interview I happened to read cited his logic behind some of his more maddening decisions. He basically said he was more than happy to take high-paying, crap-acting jobs that meant 6 weeks of work and the rest of the year off to be with his family and work on personal projects. Makes sense to me. Now if only I could be afforded such a luxury.

I'm not doing myself any favors by posting a link to Affleck's book picks. The link goes to that cursed befouler of television, Oprah, and her ridiculous magazine on which her wretched mug is pasted. Not my fault! If there was a better link with the same info, I'd use it. Everyone knows I attribute the general decline of North American intellect to Oprah's television show. Add Dr. Phil to the mix and the world becomes a slack-jawed beast of burden.

However, Affleck's book picks are pretty damn impressive. Moreover, his articulation of his choices is even better. Say what you want about his prissy films (and I'll probably agree), but the man is well read. And I dig that.

Affleck's Top Five Books

Again, sorry for making you go to one of Oprah's website. I should be skinned alive for that.

Kundera's Theodicy of Shit

I finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being last week. My wife's assessment sums it up best: it's the kind of book that embeds itself in your mind, and plays out little by little, for weeks and weeks after. My gut feeling is that Kundera's writing is of a quality unlike any other. In this book he, as the narrator, steps right into the scenes and halts them, physically prevents them from continuing until after he finishes a particular thought. It's as impressive as it is infuriating at times. I have no idea how the movie adaptation works with this dilemma.

One has to wonder what is left when all the commentary is removed. What are the character arcs and how, if at all, are they reached? I'm not sure I have an answer. I know I love the book, but resent it a little too. It's pretentious in parts, some scenes clearly written to provide the author a soap-box. But my resentment is also in knowing he speaks of things with an authority beyond my grasp. I know I will return to this book again and again, each read providing something new.

That being said, there are reams of quotes worth mentioning. Most of them already lurking about different blogs. One that has stayed in my brain since I last put the book down is Kundera's ponderings on God, humankind, and shit. To put the quotes in context (to the best of my knowledge), Kundera the narrator is examining the existence of shit, and the need to defecate, and the seeming unacceptability of the act (by persons) because of a strange shame attached to it, and how it poses a problem with the basic theological tenets of God's relationship with man.

Kundera (as a child) imagining God:

He was a bearded old man with eyes, nose, a long beard, and I would say to myself that if He had a mouth, He had to eat. And if He ate, He had intestines. But that thought always gave me a fright, because even though I come from a family that was not particularly religious, I felt the idea of a divine intestine to be sacrilegious. Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely, that man was created in God’s image. Either/or: either man was created in God’s image — and God has intestines — or God lacks intestines and man is not like him.

The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the great Gnostic master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus “ate and drank, but did not defecate.” Shit is a more onerous problem than evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man’s crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man.

Kundera explaining how the denial of shit is kitsch:

As long as man was allowed to remain in Paradise, either (like Valentinus’ Jesus) he did not defecate at all, or (as would seem more likely) he did not look upon shit as something repellent. Not until after God expelled man from Paradise did He make him feel disgust. Man began to hide what shamed him, and by the time he removed the veil, he was blinded by a great light. Thus, immediately after his introduction to disgust, he was introduced to excitement. Without shit (in both the literal and figurative senses of the word) there would be no sexual love as we know it, accompanied by pounding heart and blinded senses…

Behind all European faiths, religious and political, we find the first chapter of Genesis, which tells us that the world was created properly, that human existence is good, and that we are therefore entitled to multiply. Let us call this basic faith a categorical agreement with being. The fact that until recently the word “shit” appeared in print as s— has nothing to do with moral considerations. You can’t claim shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. Either/or: either shit is acceptable (in which case don’t lock yourself in the bathroom) or we are created in an unacceptable manner.

It follows, then, that the aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch… Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable to human existence.

Milan Kundera and Vertigo

Anyone whose goal is "something higher" must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of Falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
~The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Years ago, I climbed the Squamish Chief with a few friends. Upon its summit, some of us crawled to the edge of the 900 foot bluffs. We rested our chins on our hands and peered down the cold slate rock to witness mist, a winding highway with sluggish vehicles, the impeccable dots of century-old trees. I remember the advice of one of the more seasoned hikers, to keep our chins on our hands, not to stand up and face the openness below. Why? Because we would want to jump. Like lemurs. Like zealots. Like lovers. So we inched backwards, on hands and knees, our eyes aching to see over and below one last time, our minds fighting the urge to hurl our bodies loose.