I've been reading up about my favourite writers lately. F Scott Fitzgerald, W. Somerset Maugham, John le Carre, Michael Ondaatje, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Haruki Murakami. I'm not sure what in particular binds them. Each write of wealth and corruption, politics, romance, human flaws and foibles. Foibles, incidentally, is one of the funniest words ever made. Foibles. You can't say it aloud without giggling. Don't deny it. Also, kumquat. Onion-domes. There's more, definitely.
I like their restrained styles (ok, Plath excepted, comparing yourself to a Jewish holocaust or Hiroshima bomb blast victim isn't restrained at all.) To me, the mark of a truly good writer is to say so much with so little. The art of the understatement. Like evidence in a courtroom. Let it speak for itself. Let the world judge. They're my heroes, if you could ever speak so grandly. Some of them, like F Scott Fitzgerald and Sylvia Plath, ended up spiralling into hedonistic self-destruction (or less hedonistic and more feminist martyr.) Still, I love what they were trying to do. Free-thinking hedonists. In life, they wanted only the absolute. The unattainable highs. By drugs or sex or success or wealth or wild company. Silken moments to forever play. Life at full volume. Now that's interesting.
"We die. We die, rich with the tastes of lovers and tribes. Characters we have climbed into as if trees."
- Michael Ondaatje, 'The English Patient.'
I have this feeling that people are watching, and wondering what I will do next. Perhaps this is pure vanity. Probably. It's the product of walking past your face on a wall every day and being told you are a person of promise and potential by your professional mentors. By professors and strangers, family and friends. Promise and potential are fickle. I'm very lucky. My sheer academic indecision prompted me to choose courses of study that fit my passions - creativity and high ideals. But you know, now what? My job contracts expire at the end of the year. My editorial team - essentially, talented friends - and I have, at most, six months to prove that this wild idea dreamed up over law school coffee does have an audience, can attract advertisers/sponsors beyond a seed money Law faculty grant, and ultimately, can change the systemic flaws that feed a law school culture of ruthless competition, suicidal anxiety, and ambition without real purpose. These are issues that really aren't exclusive to law school - they are just more prevalent and obvious here than elsewhere. So, perhaps we'll succeed. Then what?
You know, you can rule nations. You can lead companies. You can make grand speeches. You can be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a circus sideshow. You could be a writer. You could be an artist. You could be a film-maker. You could be an Indian seamstress or a Indonesian maid or a Columbian drug runner or Sudanese rebel leader. It really doesn't matter. It's not about you, or your talent, or your ambitions. No, life - and death, god or whatever your name for it, and love - is about something more ephemeral. You can't hold it, but you can taste it. You can't own it, but you can feel it. Your moral conscience. The flow of life. The Holy Spirit. The Four Noble Truths. Turn from these, and life grows claustrophobic.
Anyway, that's the realisation I've reached in these past few months, perhaps years. It has no practical advantage - nothing obvious. It's not a degree or a job promotion or a legal victory. But I have a hunch that these beliefs will lead to a very untidy, deeply fulfilling life. Life ends anyway. If you are not meant to survive, then life can't be about accumulating great material wealth by which to gratify your visceral senses. Sure, I like expensive living. But sustaining such a life is not the purpose of my actions. I wake up everyday never quite sure what will happen next. But I guarantee it will be interesting. It will be worthwhile. It will be something from which to learn.
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