Image generated with the assistance of copilot
There is a beautiful piece of cinematography in Nikita Mikhalkov’s movie Urga, where one is presented with a vast panoramic field of golden wheat. There’s movement in the distance. The image gets closer and closer and slowly coming into focus. It’s accompanied by the sound of rumbling hooves and snorting. Wafts of agitated crop dust float in a state of suspended animation hasten the suspense. The screen centres on the focal point, Gombo, the protagonist, a vigorous Mongolian equestrian shepherd.The scene acts as an apt metaphor for the personal essay. One begins with something out of focus. A word like ‘nostalgia.’ A sentence like ‘It happened like this.’ A quote like Soderberg’s ‘People want to be loved, failing that admired…our soul seeks connection at any price.’ An image like Avril Paten’s painting, Windows in the West and a journey begins. I have no maps for this journey. I have no coordinates. Just the loose excursions of my mind. My reader joins me on the pilgrimage on this track, this road, this highway to seemingly nowhere, but the scenery is interesting, occasionally captivating. It’s worth the effort.
It’s an image of what’s going on in my head, albeit a glass darkly. But the process of pen to paper sparks a chemistry that is leading to a place. The place appears and disappears in a literary eclipse. We appear lost, but in the large vat of editing, the destination emerges.
Like a camel on the road to Kathmandu, the personal essay can take the load I have to pack on. My memoirs, musings, my angst, the loose excursions of my mind, peculiarities and fears, my worldview, and philosophies. The introduction to the personal essay was like bursting out of prison and finding a voice for all I have to say. I was free.
Writing is more than just telling a good story. Motives for writing change. In this year of 2024, I write because I’m dying. Well, not in the immediate sense. At some point in the past, Thanatos took my measurements, and the gown is being prepared. But is pending mortality a justifiable reason for writing? Yes, if I wish to be remembered. Yes, if I desire those memories to be wholesome and just. Allow me to explain.
Apart from the obvious, there is a great unjust disadvantage the dead have over the living. The dead cannot defend themselves. Unlike the characters in Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s novel, The Dirty Dust, the faithful departed cannot express their opinions about what goes on in the land of the living.
There’s a story told in my family about a relative who was long gone before I was born. He had the reputation of being a rogue. One day a salesman was going from door to door selling wares from a suitcase. When he went to Freddie’s door, Freddie took his suitcase and closed his door in the man’s face. The man knocked on the door frantically asking for his possessions. And here’s where the story grows as tall as Jack’s beanstalk: When the man peeped through my relative’s keyhole shouting for his case, my kinsman sprayed hairspray in the man’s eye leaving him jumping up and down in pain. The cherished family myth is resurrected and embellished every year at family gatherings when I was a child . But myth, it is.
Identity is a concept we hold dear. Through life we have some control over it, but not a monopoly. We have a psychological assessment of self. We know if we are kind or a narcissist. We are painfully aware if we are low in self-esteem. We can create a wholesome view of ourselves by good actions or a negative view by a wrong course in life. But our ultimate reputation lies in the hands of society, our friends and family who succeed us. Our personal assessment dies when we die. Then, like it or not, others can raise cupboard skeletons that are figments of corrupt imaginations. Therefore, I write to leave stories and essays that surreptitiously reveal who I am. An apologia pro vita sua, you might say.
Every time I put pen to paper, I ask myself, who am I. I’ve never discovered that answer. Upstairs in my vaults I’m a youth. That has never changed. My friends feel the same. So, it’s not madness. I have gained some wisdom. Not much though. I still make emotional decisions. I’m spontaneous and I have made some disastrous financial decisions in the past few decades. Yet my body tells me something different. I can have a conversation with that inexperienced other me. I’m not sure if we use words are we exchange instant thoughts, but we communicate with each other. But then Adolescent and I disagree. He thinks I should have done better in life. I think he never had the chances. Home was never Green Gables and then there’s the nature/nurture divide thing. No divide with me. I was awarded the full bhuna as we say in Glasgow. Below average intelligence and home was never exactly a sanctuary of human kindness. So, how can anyone cast dispersions before you know the whole story. The youth and I both agree.
"And I say to you that every careless word that they will speak,
men will give an account of it in day of judgment.
For by your words you will be justified,
and by your words you will be condemned.”
Matthew 12:36