Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
March and it feels like a very early Spring.
NOTEBOOKS 2
The novel, Third Wish, was written over a period of ten years. And there are ten years’ worth of notebooks that underlie the process. Recently, in response to readers’ requests, I reviewed those notebooks to see what items I still find important to my ongoing thinking. And reread the novel to see how those ideas were woven into the text.
Here’s what I found in volume one:
Most people know what they are doing.
Most people even know why they are doing what they are doing.
But most people don’t know what they do does.
“I withdrew from the world, not because I had enemies, but because I had friends. Not because they did me an ill turn . . . but because they thought me better than I am. That was a lie I could not endure.” – From the notebooks of Albert Camus
Letting go is not the same as giving up.
Admitting you were beaten is not the same as defeat.
Withdrawal with honor is not the same as running away.
Because you are temporarily lost yourself, being found by almost anybody will do for the time being.
The number of working models for human relationships is infinite. If people openly agree on their contract with one another, anything is possible
A book does not have to have a happy ending – just an ending that contains possibilities of what might happen next. A reader should be led to want to go on from there.
Albert Einstein’s three rules of work:
1. Out of clutter, find simplicity.
2. From discord, make harmony.
3. In the middle of difficulty lie opportunity.
Some basic rules of Fabuliste Curnonsky:
Romance is easy. Love is blind.
Sex can be safe. Love is always dangerous.
There are promises that will never be kept.
There are questions that must never be asked.
There are truths that must never be told.
The horse trader’s rule:
Never appear to know too much.
Myth and, fables, and fairy tales are the wrapping paper of truth.
Every child knows there is sense in nonsense. – Edward Lear
Elspeth Mucklebackit (a name I like.)
People do not usually ride Zebras. It can be done if you are determined. But whether it is really worth the trouble to you and the zebra is the question.
I exalt uncertainty – it is the source of surprise.
“What you can imagine is real.” Picasso said that.
Every time I was unhappy enough to wish I did not exist, I happened to look around and think, “I would have missed all this.”
And kept on down the path.
(There – enough for now – more for another time.)