Category: Prose

Quote of the Day

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

So Thomas Carlyle wrote in an essay, “Signs of the Times” in 1829. He counseled against vaticination (which is a word I had never previously come across which means “prophecy” or “prediction”) and says that:

Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them…

But man’s “large discourse of reason” will look “before and after”; and, impatient of the “ignorant present time,” will indulge in anticipation far more than profits him. Seldom can the unhappy be persuaded that the evil of the day is sufficient for it; and the ambitious will not be content with present splendour, but paints yet more glorious triumphs, on the cloud-curtain of the future.

The case, however, is still worse with nations. For here the prophets are not one, but many; and each incites and confirms the other; so that the fatidical fury spreads wider and wider, till at last even Saul must join in it. For there is still a real magic in the action and reaction of minds on one another. The casual deliration of a few becomes, by this mysterious reverberation, the frenzy of many; men lose the use, not only of their understandings, but of their bodily senses; while the most obdurate unbelieving hearts melt, like the rest, in the furnace where all are cast as victims and as fuel.

[Picture by DigiDragon licensed under Creative Commons.]

Tags Thomas Carlyle

Life Politics Prose Reflections

Quote of the Day

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date August 27, 2008

Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

Thomas Hardy, in The Hand of Ethelberta.

Tags Pragmatism

Election 2008 Obama Prose The Clintons

The Message from Hillary

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date June 5, 2008

Clinton’s campaign had leaked to the press word that she was going to suspend her campaign and endorse Obama early yesterday afternoon after Clinton received strong push-back in her meetings around Washington to the idea of staying in the race a bit longer. The Obama campaign first learned of this development from the press.

Early this morning, Hillary’s campaign made an official announcement via an email to her supporters at 1:53 am entitled, “I want you to know.” The full text:

Dear Joseph,

I wanted you to be one of the first to know: on Saturday, I will hold an event in Washington D.C. to thank everyone who has supported my campaign. Over the course of the last 16 months, I have been privileged and touched to witness the incredible dedication and sacrifice of so many people working for our campaign. Every minute you put into helping us win, every dollar you gave to keep up the fight meant more to me than I can ever possibly tell you.

On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.

I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party’s nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.

When I decided to run for president, I knew exactly why I was getting into this race: to work hard every day for the millions of Americans who need a voice in the White House.

I made you — and everyone who supported me — a promise: to stand up for our shared values and to never back down. I’m going to keep that promise today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life.

I will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.

I know as I continue my lifelong work for a stronger America and a better world, I will turn to you for the support, the strength, and the commitment that you have shown me in the past 16 months. And I will always keep faith with the issues and causes that are important to you.

In the past few days, you have shown that support once again with hundreds of thousands of messages to the campaign, and again, I am touched by your thoughtfulness and kindness.

I can never possibly express my gratitude, so let me say simply, thank you.

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

There’s still asking their supporters to Contribute which is interesting – understandable too, as her campaign is in quite a bit of debt.

Prose

The utility of principles

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date May 14, 2008

“We don’t have much time, Kadife,” he said. He could hear that strange note of dread in his voice. “I know you’re bright enough and sensitive enough to get through all this with grace. I’m saying this to you as someone who’s spent years as a political exile. Listen to me: Life’s not about principles, it’s about happiness.”

“But if you don’t have any principles, and if you don’t have faith, you can’t be happy at all,” said Kadife.

“That’s true. But in a brutal country like ours where human life is cheap, it’s stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs, high ideals – only people living in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.”

“Actually, it’s the other way round. In a poor country, the only consolation people can have is the one that comes from their beliefs.”

Ka wanted to say, But the things they believe aren’t true! but he managed to hold his tongue.

From Snow by Orhan Pamuk on pages 312-313, in a conversation on whether or not Kadife should bare her head.

Tags islamism, Orham Pamuk, Snow

Prose Reflections

Imagineering!

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date April 9, 2008

Never actually been to Disney World, but this observation by Seth Stevenson was fascinating:

The Imagineering Field Guide to Disney’s Animal Kingdom reveals that the imagineers deliberately left the parking lots out in front of this Disney-style zoo as bleak and barren as they could. A wasteland, with no strips of grass to interrupt the endless asphalt slab. They wanted to heighten the contrast we feel when entering into the lush, wooded Animal Kingdom park. The scheme “ensures that the immersion into nature … will be very impactful.”

My first thought upon reading this was: Screw you, imagineers! Parking lots suck enough as it is. You’re saying you made yours even more depressing than necessary, just so you could showcase some cutesy landscaping idea? Go imaginuck yourselves!

Once I’d gotten this indignation out of my system, my second thought was: Gosh, they sure do put a lot of thought into this stuff. Leafing through these behind-the-scenes books (I also have The Imagineering Field Guide to Epcot) brings to light, yet again, the insane attention to detail you find at every Disney property.

Excerpts from my Journals Prose Reflections

A man and a woman

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date March 27, 2008

Excerpts from my Journals
[From 1995, overheard on the street of my suburban neighborhood as I was trying to fall asleep.]

[In the distance, barely heard voices talking – arguing. One is a man’s; the other a woman’s. The man is doing most of the talking, and the only word that can be made out if “fuck” and only because of its repetition. The woman’s tone is pleading.]

[The voices draw nearer and become clearer.]

Man: I don’t fuckin’ care what the fuck you want. I’m fucking getting the hell out of here.

Woman: Please [almost whining], come one. Talk to me. Please!

Man: [shouting] I don’t fuckin’ care at all about you. I’m fucking getting away at the first fucking chance I get. I don’t give a fuck about you.

Woman: But we’re married…

Man: [shouting] I don’t fuckin’ care.

Woman: Wait, wait…I want to give you some money.

Man: I don’t want your fuckin’ money.

[The voices begin to fade as the woman’s pleading is now louder than the man’s curses.]

All these years later, coming across this torn out page pasted in another notebook, I feel the same tightening of my gut, feeling the desperation and the anger so raw that I felt that night as a thirteen year old kid hearing this from his window in the early hours of the morning.

Excerpts from my Journals History McCain Politics Prose Reflections

Senator McCain and Senator Bradley

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date March 26, 2008

Excerpts from my Journals
[The week of January 21st, 2000; shortly before the New Hampshire primaries.]

If neither McCain nor Bradley make it past the primaries, I will be disillusioned. I am confident that if either one makes it to the general election, he will win. I find it hard to see how someone can vote for Gore or Bush unless they have some vested interest in one of their candidacies, or because of single-issue loyalty. The two establishment candidates merely want to win. Bush makes careful statements to secure the loyalty of those hardliners in his party yet avoid arousing the ire of those who disagree with him in the mainstream. There is nothing wrong with that – it merely shows shrewdness, but it seems hard to believe Bush thought of these careful statements himself. He seems a man propped up by aides, a cardboard figure given life by the establishment, a soul whose only joy is victory. Gore comes off as more pathetic – a Pinocchio trying to pretend to be a real politician to voters, a man who lacks charisma trying to charm, someone who hates defeat but does not consider himself worthy of winning.

In the end, I voted for Ralph Nader – because I could not bring myself to vote for either candidate. I can see now how my decision was wrong – and how Mr. Gore, although a poor candidate, would have made a competent president. I also seriously underestimated the radical nature of the Bush presidency. What I believed the country needed in 2000 was a non-establishment president – and so, I set my hopes on John McCain and Bill Bradley.

Unfortunately, we were forced to choose between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush.

Excerpts from my Journals History Politics Post 9/11 Generation Prose Reflections The War on Terrorism

An emotional calculus

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date March 25, 2008

In evaluating the legacy of the administration of George W. Bush and where we need to go as a nation from here, we need to undertake the delicate, obscure, and imprecise art of projecting how the future will be affected by our decisions today, taking into account the many elements of the past and present that are out of our control. This unknowability of the future and how our decisions affect is one of the essential pragmatic and moral arguments in favor of democracy – because we cannot determine the optimal course using reason, we all take shared responsibility for making our best judgment.Emotions are our attempt, as beings of limited understanding and knowledge, to synthesize the great unconscious mass of our knowledge – the subtle hints, the forgotten information, the half-remembered, the projections based on our past experience – with that which we have analyzed and understood.

What I propose to do here is to perform a kind of emotional calculus – which I think is commonly practiced but rarely described in these terms. Reason is often said to be the light illuminating the darkness; but the future is made of a darkness impenetrable to reason’s light; instead of walking confidently down a lighted path, we instead must grope in the darkness, struggling to identify how best to make our way, and only slowly coming to understand our surroundings.

This is the first part of a three part argument – to be posted on the blog (in at least three parts) over the next week – based on my understanding of two events from the early days of the Bush administration and a more recent event, and how these events relate to what might be called grandiosely the American psyche – but more aptly would be called my personal insight into what Carl Jung identified as the collective unconscious. I would call this attempt David Brooks-esque without being leavened by humor.

My method begins with my own personal experiences and follows an emotional logic.

Excerpts from my Journals Prose

Brevity

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date March 18, 2008

Excerpts from My Journals
[Dated Summer 2001. When I was reading Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way.]

Brief is the growing time of joy for mortals and brief the flowers bloom that falls to the earth shaken by grim fate. Things of a day! What are we and what are we not. Man’s a shadows dream.

Vanity of vanities: all is vanity.

The Greek poet Pindar.

Excerpts from my Journals Prose

Well-crafted lies

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date March 17, 2008

Excerpts from My Journals
[Dated Spring 1999. The beginning of a short story I never finished. Perhaps it was supposed to be a novel.]

Life is frivolous. Fear always lurks in the slightly obscured parts of his mind. A fear of an imminent catastrophe that will make his entire life meaningless. An hour from now, the sun will rise, streaking the sky with the tears another day brings, staining the darkness with streams of light. Anyone can write a beautiful sentence, but it is something else to make that beauty mean something. And who can do that? In his mind the question echoes… The answer seemed all too simple. No one could. Beauty was dead because his soul no longer had a grasp of the subtle emotion. Meaning was just violence inflicted upon a coincidence of happenings and ideas and the churning of lust and fear and desperation. It was the creation of a story out of life, and he knew it was futile. So, he went about his business in denial of his self and his life.

All his thoughts are well-crafted lies meant to deceive their continuous observer. And he falls for them, falls hard, believing in love and faith and all those other meaningless concepts and dedicates the pain that some would call his life to them. Most of all, he dedicates himself to story. Stories cause his eyes to glisten and smiles to creep onto his face and fear to surface from the depths of his being. Stories, simple and complex, all end up being simple. Boy becomes man, girl becomes woman, an adult grows into something better or perhaps worse. He delights in these lies that throw light on the darkness illuminating the inner emptiness of whatever there is. They bring him joy though—or he thinks they do?

The sky is pale with night as he begins to write, typing out his words on a glowing screen in the darkness of a room. Sleep beckons, calls, drags him like the tide pulled him out to sea as a child; trying to drag him under. For whatever reason, some delusion of inspiration, he stays awake, continuing to try to resurrect his soul. Writing will be his resurrection. Writing will be his salvation. Writing makes water wine and wine blood. Writing is his life, or all of it that he cares for. Writing is the wound he hides in when fear beings to creep into his heart.