(Yesterday’s momentous decision from the Supreme Court on presidential immunity was disgraceful. The six justices in the majority should be ashamed. Today, I republish an essay from July 2021.)
“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.
Writing feels perilous when you are doing it truthfully. Telling the truth, not with your brain but with your heart, is a risky business.
Accordingly, I know whenever I have touched on the truth of 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 for myself 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.
The wonderful writer Janet Malcolm maintained a staunch belief that people led secret lives behind 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.
HEADLINES:
Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have broad immunity, dimming chance of a pre-election Trump trial (AP)
Justices give Trump broad immunity, delaying Jan. 6 trial (WP)
Blinken seeks to reassure US allies after Biden’s debate performance (Politico)
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) acknowledged "very honest and serious, rigorous conversations taking place at every level of our party" as Democrats continue to consider whetherreplacing Biden would be worth the chaos (HuffPost)
France’s far right may be on the brink of power after Macron’s gamble backfired. Here’s what comes next (CNN)
Russia has become so economically isolated that China could order the end of war in Ukraine (The Conversation)
The national debt is over $34 trillion. It’s time to tell the truth about the U.S. government’s finances (Fortune)
Border crossings fall to their lowest monthly number of the Biden presidency (NBC)
Trump ally Steve Bannon surrenders to federal prison to serve 4-month sentence on contempt charges (AP)
The Youngest Pandemic Children Are Now in School, and Struggling (NYT)
Caribbean island of Carriacou ‘flattened’ after Hurricane Beryl makes landfall (WP)
Why Beryl Is a Bad Sign for This Year’s Hurricane Season (NYT)
A new index is using AI tools to measure U.S. economic growth in a broader way (CNBC)
Robot with human brain tissue learns how to use arms (Independent)
Taylor Swift Under Fire For Leaving Idling Plane Double-Parked Outside Store (The Onion)
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