“I was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous as you cannot always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.”
― Jojo Moyes, The Last Letter from Your Lover
***
I'm sure it has long since become clear to regular readers of my missives that for me very little of this is about the past, strictly speaking. That the very last thing I am doing is writing a memoir.
No. If this kind of writing had a name, maybe it would be called a memoir of the future. Everything that has happened until now is prologue, from my point of view, with an unknown outcome.
But time is not a constant, as quantum physics has demonstrated, so what in conventional terms might seem like a comparatively short future may in all the ways that really matter to be the best part of the whole story.
I love the quote up top by Jojo Moyes, the 51-year-old English journalist and romance novel author, about how perilous writing feels when you are doing it truthfully. Telling the truth, not with your brain but with your heart, is a perilous business.
Accordingly, I know whenever I have touched on the past too closely because when I publish that essay I am scared.
The problem with the past, the honest past, is it involves digging up and stirring up old passions, old pains that may never have completely healed.
I am not a psychiatrist, and I'm willing to believe that some good comes of the process of resurfacing painful memories, processing them, recovering from them, if that is actually possible.
But I suspect some good also comes from acknowledging them privately but allowing them to fade away in favor of celebrating the better outcomes of our efforts at leading self-examined lives.
It's just an instinct, not a proposition. Some things stay private.
So I've established that this is ordinary, that there's enough good and bad in my past to fill a conventional memoir but that would be the book I have chosen not to write.
Everything I have been doing since this started is about the future. The past is dust.
The great Janet Malcolm, who passed away recently, maintained a staunch belief that people led secret lives well beyond their public lives. Her writing sometimes explored these secrets, such as her book about the relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.
The way I refer to such matters is that we each have a rich inner life. And for me the definition of true intimacy is when one person feels able to share his or her inner secret life with another person, even a stranger.
To me that is just another word for love.
***
My weekend was dominated by the birthdays of two grandsons -- Luca's 13th and Leif's 12th. As part of celebrating we went to baseball games, the quintessential summer birthday experience. First to the Giants Friday night with Luca; then to their minor league affiliate, the Churros, on Saturday night with Leif.
In the Churros dugout I spied the great Will Clark, once a superstar on the major league club, now a batting coach. Nobody ever swung the bat from the left side with a more beautiful stroke than Clark, who was nicknamed "The Thrill" for all of his big-time hits.
He also was a fierce competitor.
One memorable night, I took my oldest son and my parents to Candlestick Park to see a Giants game against the Padres. In the late innings, a flame-throwing Padre pitcher hit Clark's teammate Robby Thompson in the head with a pitch.
You don't do that in baseball.
Th next batter was Clark. After staring down the pitcher, he proceeded to send a monster home run soaring magnificently into the night sky to take his revenge and win the game. That's who Will Clark is.
THE HEADLINES:
* Amid fire and floods, a moment of truth for climate action -- Scientists have repeatedly warned that the planet remains on track to exceed a critical threshold for warming within a decade. Yet experts and activists also see a rare opportunity to change course — possibly the last chance before many effects become irreversible. (WP)
* Record-Breaking Flooding In China Has Left Over One Million People Displaced (NPR)
* Scores of wildfires in Western U.S. rage on (Reuters)
* Protesters Clash With Riot Police Over French Health Passes (AP)
* They Waited, They Worried, They Stalled. This Week, They Got the Shot. -- The U.S. vaccine rollout has plateaued and the course of the coronavirus pandemic in this country may depend on how many people are ultimately swayed to get vaccinated. (NYT)
* Anti-Lockdown Protesters Clash with Police in Sydney (Storyful, AP)
* Greek police clash with protesters in rally against mandatory vaccinations (Reuters)
* Fauci says US headed in ‘wrong direction’ on coronavirus (AP)
* American Dysfunction Is the Biggest Barrier to Fighting Covid -- Lax vaccination and haphazard rules on masking sabotage the fight against the Delta variant in the U.S. (NYT)
* Malaysia's total coronavirus infections rise above 1 million (Reuters)
* As a Covid outbreak seizes Cambodia, patients who test positive for the virus say they are being forced into quarantine centers that are more like makeshift prisons than hospitals. (NYT)
* Sparked by pandemic fallout, homeschooling surges across U.S. (AP)
* Study: U.S. Wastes 2 Million Hours Annually Figuring Out Where Tape Roll Starts (The Onion)
***
"This Little Bird"
Song by Marianne Faithfull
Written by John Louder-milk
There's a little bird that somebody sends
Down to the earth to live on the wind.
Borne on the wind and he sleeps on the wind
This little bird that somebody sends.
He's light and fragile and feathered sky blue,
So thin and graceful the sun shines through.
This little bird who lives on the wind,
This little bird that somebody sends.
He flies so high up in the sky
Out of reach of human eye.
And the only time that he touches the ground
Is when that little bird
Is when that little bird
Is when that little bird dies.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQY5I20ipoM>
-30-
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