It’s quiet here in Austin.
One roommate has gone home. Another, my best friend, is off at a party with our friends. I’m working. Which is what I enjoy doing. The solitude of words is comforting to me in ways that the real world will never be. I’m glad that I’ve found solace and comfort in these things. I value that in deep ways that, ironically, can’t be expressed with words.
I am profoundly okay with these happenings.
***
Irony: an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected. 
I was watching Scrubs last night before I faded into sleep. I’ve always loved that show. But not for the reasons I suspect others enjoy it. I love the character of Dr. Perry Cox, the acerbic mentor and teacher who constantly pushes his students to the brink of implosion.
During the very good years of the show, before he became a characture, I found him familiar and comforting.
He’s unrelenting with his students, never giving an inch to anyone who complains about the work or who gives less than their best effort. He is a snarling ideologue with a purpose, one who can’t be understood – and shouldn’t be understood – by those students.
I love him because he is hated. And I understand him because I am him.
When I wrestled with the early days of my recovery, hallucinating and throwing up my guts, I found myself thinking of Bucky Switzer, Greg Poplin, Dave Evans, Bill Drummond. The snarling ideologues of my life who didn’t ask me what I thought I needed to succeed. Who didn’t fill me with false praise about my abilities. Who didn’t treat me like their equal when it’s clear to me now – although certainly not then – that I wasn’t.
There are no words to thank the men who pushed, cajoled and knocked me into manhood. All I can do is what they did before.
And hope that I will be loved because I am hated.
***
Process: A series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result.
I’m a good writer. I know this because everyone tells me so. Or the everyones who read my work, and surely they wouldn’t lie to me.
So I know I must be a good writer.
Except I know the secret. Writing isn’t a product that you can sit down and quantify. Surely there are people who use and manipulate the words in amazingly complex ways, people who are better writers than others. The good writers will tell you, though, that it’s a process.
I’ve never met a good writer who says they write their best on deadline, who doesn’t get up and wrestle with their prose every day, who doesn’t understand what words need to be ripped out of the story, who doesn’t understand that their words are butter knives being used in brain surgery.
Writing is like nature. A brutal struggle for survival with no external meaning to it. The words are born, the assemble together in long strings, they manipulate the reader when they are assembled together just right and then they die. If you get caught up in the idea that you’re assembly process is infallible or works best on the fly, you are not a writer.
In that sense, those who call themselves writers but who are in actuality not writers are like Canadians. They look just like us until certain words comes out.
Writing does not make you a writer. The process does.
***
Rebirth: the revival of learning and culture.
For many years, maybe all my years, I was violently opposed to the ironies and processes of my life. I fought them. I smashed them.
But always they would come back.
It was miserable. And misery. There was no place from which to hide as they set upon me from all sides and, having decided to never relent, there was a constant battle going on within my life.
I see these things in my students at times, these battles that I know can’t be won that nevertheless will be fought. I know because I fought them. And you fought them. These are the things we do.
So I try to prepare them as best I can, not with the weapons they tell me they need but the ones I know they need.
And I see them in my life at times, and in my writing. I am not always successful as disengaging from the fight, but I try. Eventually I do. I must. The 12 Steps make sure of that. More importantly, my body now feels that it’s the right thing to do.
I can walk away from the battles much easier now. I am okay with the silence.
***
I received a phone call from my potential agent on Monday after months of trading emails.
The critique was on one hand not great news. There is much work to be done. I’ve entered a new genre and, much like my students on Day One, I am lost and without direction.
My proposal, in other words, sucked.
On the other hand, the critique was quite good. I can tell a story. I have a great, unique voice. I’m able to, despite the massive limitations of the proposal, intrigue people. These are not easy things (although as I would tell my students, don’t get excited about doing the thing you’re supposed to do).
There was a very long moment when the battled raged within me. On which hand would I focus.
And I remembered. All the lessons, moments, the knowledge, the wisdom. All the people who I could never thank, who I could never track down after every one of these moments.
I remembered. I get to make the choice because these are the ironies and processes of my life.
And tonight it is quiet.
