"I of my own knowledge…"

Sunday, July 18, 2010

2 AM. Okay. Papa, I don’t know if it is worthwhile for us to continue the discussion I thought we might have about community, but I’m available if you wish to do so.

Of course I’m available. Haven’t we been setting you up?

It certainly seems so, often enough!

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Monday, July 19, 2010

5:15 AM. Was going to skip this until later, saving my energy, but I guess we’re going ahead. So — what’s today’s theme?

Look to your on-going list.

All right, let’s talk about your relationship to your father. This isn’t quite on my list, but it’s in my mental list, and in fact is in my mind since reading in Reynolds last night. So — your father.

My father. From my perspective now, the subject looks a lot different.

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Saturday, July 17, 2010

Nearly 5:30 AM. An idea [for another novel], finally — the one character begins as black-and-white and learns that everything is relative, every judgment can always be nuanced. I woke up to that idea, but don’t remember anything else, or any specifics. Perhaps influenced by having watched “Witness” with Larry [a visiting TMI friend] last night.

So here we are again. I re-read that material from yesterday to a friend who had found it hard going, and I saw that if you didn’t already know where it was going, it was hard to grasp, for it combined two themes — what it was trying to say in itself, and what it was trying to say about the process of saying it. Again evidence that I will need to apply my skills at writing and editing. I can’t just take dictation.

Papa, you will have seen “Witness” with me, I suppose — or anyway can see what I know about my having seen it. (Which is it?) I wonder if you share my feelings about what it says of our loss of community.

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Friday, July 16, 2010

Almost 4 AM. Papa, more? Wonderful stuff yesterday.

Better questions get better answers, you were told.

And I keep seeing it. I also see that the more I know to start with, the more I can be taught.

Well, the more you’ll understand. Just because the information has to flow from non-physical to physical doesn’t mean the process is any different. In fact, that isn’t what’s happening at all. Let me give you over for a minute.

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Thursday, July 15, 2010

1:20 AM. Got a little sleep but I’m wheezing again and my mind is active, so why not go to work? Last night I took the header notes I have put together, broke them up one per line, read them into excel, sorted first by date and then, another sort, by date within individual. It comes to 14 pages, through June. More than eight pages of the 14 are Hemingway. A lot of information, if I can organize it. Never was able to do it in The Sphere And The Hologram.

3:30 AM. Might as well try; can’t read well enough to go back to sleep anyway. Who do I talk to? Papa?

Sure, why not?

Shall we continue with the questions I have accumulated so far? What about Agnes? How did you feel, all the way down, when you got that Dear John letter? [Agnes and he fell in love when he was her patient after he had been wounded in Italy in July 1918. He went home to America in January 1919, thinking that he and she would be married as soon as he could support them, but a few months later she wrote him, breaking off the engagement, redefining their love affair as kid stuff, more or less.] Obviously you were angry and hurt — but was that all? You weren’t 20 yet. Was there also some relief mixed in?

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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

12:30 AM. Papa, let’s talk about your wounding, the out-of-body (or near-death) experience, the aftermath including light, letters, and Agnes, and fear.

All good topics. [Hemingway biographer Carlos] Baker has his uses.

All right. Your first unasked question is — how much of the story as understood is accurate. You’ve read that I carried a man to safety, and you’ve read that it would have been impossible, and you’ve read that I started to, then was hit again and fell and was carried in. You have become wary of anything I said anytime, because of my tendency to spin yarns about my life and exploits. In fact it was this very tendency and your dismay about it that helped hook us up a few years ago. So I’ll try to stick to the trail of the truth.

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Tuesday, July 6, 2010

4 AM. So, Papa, I started looking into [biographer Carlos] Baker last night, reading a little of your entry to World War I. Should I do it more systematically, or can I just re-read what I want to? Will the job get done either way?

Don’t let this little project get out of proportion. I like your title, but maybe another book about Hemingway is not what the world needs most urgently.

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Monday, July 5, 2010

5 AM. Bad night, though again not asthma. (Did need to use the spray, though, twice.) Up regardless, like clockwork, having no idea of the time.

Talked a good bit about this process, to several people. Wanting to add people to the list, maybe a couple I have forgotten. Ate just a little too much — not much too much, just a little. Not too bad.

All right, ready again. Your words yesterday struck several of my friends, as I thought they would. One said she had tears in her eyes — the tears of those finally being seen and validated.

Yes, and you’ll notice that more than one person asked you the theme of the emerging book. You gave it as more or less that everyone should become conscious of their connection, but that isn’t really the theme. Neither is it that everyone should know how much more they are than they think — desirable though both these things may be.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010

4 AM. Going to bed ever earlier, anticipating this exchange, and getting up earlier as well. I’ll lap the day if I’m not careful.

So we’re a long way before daylight, and the fruit stand is open early. Who and why?

Nothing. All right, let’s talk, papa. What is the rule, here? Sometimes I can scarcely get a word in and somebody’s off and running. Other times, as now, there’s a blankness, a waiting for me to decide what to broach.

Your question contains your answer. That is what’s going on, a gradual transfer of the initiative. And that’s worth a few words.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010

6 AM. Okay. Why do I feel so bad? Too much coffee? It can’t be too much food. Too unbalanced diet? Or — what?

Not every illness is attributable to a lack-of, or a wrong choice, or a too-much-of. If that were so, the corollary would be — do it just right and you’ll never be sick.

That makes sense. All right, forget it. Who’s up? Papa, I forgot, in yesterday’s session, that it was your anniversary, even though I knew full well it was July 2.

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