Meet Tara, named for the Goddess Tara, revered in Tibetan Buddhism as well as in Celtic lore. Cats are supposed to be worshiped, right? Tara thinks so.

In the second photo she’s making friends. Any time she ventures near her new doggy friend she receives a great big juicy kiss on the face, which of course any cat should be delighted to receive. Especially if she just finished washing the last kiss off her face. Indi also loves to get swatted in the face. I think Emily taught him to see that as fun, as a former owner had Emily de-clawed. Indi realized earlier today that Tara comes fully loaded, though she only swats when she’s playing.

We were a little concerned about the introduction, since lately Indi’s become enthusiastic about chasing strange cats out of his back yard. But when his new kitten was introduced as a member of the pack, he happily reverted to baby sitter. Tara took to him with no hissing, having been born into a home with dogs. She knows the drill. Avoid doggy kisses by cruising behind furniture and darting under beds. Especially after the doggy has just taken a long drink of water. (Very drippy business.) Indi is getting old, which you can tell by all that white fur on his face where it used to be mahogany. But having a kitten around has put a smile on all our faces and zest in our steps. (Handy when there’s a kitten darting about underfoot.)

These are the kinds of connections that strike me after viewing movies a few times — or reading books more than once. Once I get to know a story, my focus changes and, if the depiction is sound, connections and inner workings start to reveal themselves. I see not only the primary theme, but layers of meaning, sometimes meaning no one ever intended. I like, so far, the fact that I know little about how movies are made. My lack of knowledge lets me keep the illusion alive even while I look deeper.

One of my favorite forms of interaction in movies is between humans and other animals. Horses in particular. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering the connection between horses and people throughout our shared history. But horses in movies seem significant to me because, in spite of the historical relationship, so few of us spend any time with horses today. Including me. I don’t know much about horses except that even though I’ve ridden them only three times in my life (and not very well), I love them, in real life as well as in movies and books. I ate up the Misty of Chincoteague series as a girl, and Airs Above the Ground started my idol worship of Mary Stewart’s books. When I first read The Lord of the Rings, as a teenager, I was almost as upset as Sam when Bill the pony had to be released before entering Moria. I’ve thought that if there is one tiny flaw in Peter Jackson’s movie verions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy it was that Shadowfax didn’t get more attention. He was bigger than life in the books. (But the movie version is so intense and rich that I can’t complain. I can only suggest that anyone who loves the story should also read the books.)

Maybe my fascination with horses is genetic. My mom grew up around horses. Her father traded them, and spent a lot of time at the racetrack. Her maternal grandfather, a Danish immigrant, was a rancher, and a few of her relations were cowboys, either the working kind or, more recently, the rodeo kind. My dad’s grandfather was a blacksmith. So yeah, horses must connect to my DNA somehow. Possibly to everyone’s, considering human history.

There is a special horse in the movie version of The Lord of the Rings, nonetheless. Each time I watch The Two Towers, I have to go back and play a particular scene over again. Perhaps you know it. Aragorn’s horse finds him washed up on a riverbank. The horse nudges him awake, and then kneels to help his injured rider mount. The relationship between horse and man hits me, there, every time. It’s just a movie, right? Well, a little research led me to the fact that Viggo Mortensen spent extra time with that horse during filming and even purchased the horse after finishing the movie. He went on to make his next movie, Hidalgo, with another horse named TJ, again spent lots of time getting close to the horse during filming, and again purchased the horse afterward. Old news for many fans, perhaps, but new and touching for me. I haven’t seen Hidalgo yet, but now I’ll have to.

My favorite movies are the ones with so much intricacy and detail that I can watch them over and over and see something new each time. I’m the same way with books, with poetry, with artwork of all kinds, including architecture. I like the appearance of simplicity, with complexity running deep within. I like infrastructure, lots of background and foundations we never see but sense are there. I like fine craftsmanship in all forms, and the drive to put one’s heart into one’s work. I’ve started to notice this chemistry in movies sometimes, a hint of how a cast and crew must have worked as a team, that remains as a very personal energy running through the finished product. I like to think that even what winds up on the cutting room floor has a part in that energy. That’s how the world is, after all, it’s full of interconnections and even interspecies cooperation, as well as competition, yet deceivingly simple on the surface — for all its obvious glory. The best fiction and the best artwork is, after all, a metaphor for life — at times even something beyond this life.

Which leads me to a final observation from those movies, one that led to an epiphany for me. It came to me the last time I watched The Return of the King. At the very end Frodo turns for a last glance at his friends, and his face transforms from a look of sorrow and grief to a combination of mischief, delight, anticipation, and near beatification — the same expression Galadriel wore when we last saw her a moment earlier. They remind me uncannily of accounts I’ve read of near-death experiences or of messages received from the other side by mediums. Earlier in the story Gandalf even spoke to Pippin about death, referring to it as a passage to a distant country, full of wonder and beauty.

This got me to thinking about why we love fiction, and Joseph Campbell’s perpetual examination of the power of myth.

Too often today fiction is criticized as a form of manipulation, and in many cases rightly so. We see the manipulation in advertising every day, even the most artistic of it. More and more product placement in TV, sensationalized — almost fictionalized — news rather than objective coverage, celebrity worship, so-called reality TV, politicians pumping themselves up or dragging others through the mud, and religious figures taking on exaggerated roles, promising to save us from hellfire of one flavor or another. Even in purer forms of fiction, in the quest to make money, publishers and writers pump out novels faster and faster, according to contracts and marketing ploys, seeking the next book that will be like the one that sold so well before. Stories seem to lose something in the process. They become pure entertainment and cleverly rather than artistically crafted, in a hurry, with little art remaining, little beneath the surface. A tree is cut down for something that remains on bookstore shelves for a couple of months and then is sold used for a penny at Amazon, or forgotten. The reader can begin to feel manipulated or addicted to the illusion and rapid consumption rather than edified by it.

In the midst of all this, why do we still love fiction? Why do we feel driven both to create and consume story? Is it a waste of time? Is it mere child’s play, the pastime of dreamers who need to get a grip on reality? Or is there something much deeper, an innate hunger or instinctive need at work?

If, as some philosophers surmise, and many near-death experiencers and mediums claim, this world is but an illusion, then is all fiction a metaphor for this great stage performance we call life? Plays within the play? Dreams within the dream? Is its purpose to teach us to see the difference between the smaller play and the bigger play, in order to prepare us to see beyond the greater play we act out in this life? (Which might mean Shakespeare’s Hamlet is holy scripture.) Is fiction a tool, an abstract ritual object we use to prepare us to see through that illusion and finally leave this world behind?

I wonder does that make directors, actors, publishers, and fiction writers the priests, handing out the keys to salvation in the form of story? Are theaters and libraries our true temples? Some of us would love to think so, I’m sure. What an ego pump that would be, for a few. What a power trip.

Or is the truth that each human saves himself, perhaps with the cooperation and companionship of his chosen cohorts? Does each of us take in each story and each experience and sift out those of his own choosing and discretion? Does each, in his own way, create his own story, and interpret it as he journeys through life, thus honing his ability to see past the illusion? Does each person make his own way to a deeper truth, progressing step by step toward the blazing dawn of enlightenment?

How does that come about? The best fiction, the best movies, draw us in so completely that if we let ourselves we can believe they’re real at the time we’re in the story. Is that the key to realizing how completely we can be drawn into an illusion, the key that helps us begin to see that it is possible this life, this world that seems so real and has such a hold on us, might possibly also be just a story, only an illusion? Does creating our own illusions show us how it’s done?

That’s my little epiphany, perhaps not meaningful to anyone but me. These things are personal. But I didn’t invent the possibility of the world as an illusion. Plato wrote about it in his Allegory of the Cave some 2,300 years ago, and it’s my understanding there are similar teachings in Hindu scriptures possibly more than 5,000 years old. It’s a thought probably older than that, painted on the walls of caves and leached into the earth from the ashes of ancient campfires, blown on the wind by their smoke, still inhaled each day by us. An ancient thought, as ancient perhaps as myth itself, and human self, which we explore today in the form of movies, plays, short stories and novels, through art, poetry, music — as well as through religion, history, and science. But it’s new for me to think from this perspective, and I don’t think I can ever see the fiction, fantasy, dreams, or creative endeavors I choose to partake in as a waste of time, from here on out. Not that I ever did. Some instinct in me drew me to them, and I answered. Perhaps all I’ve gained from my epiphany is an answer for those who would denigrate such as being a waste of time, of being a symptom of escaping reality or not being practical. It could be that carefully selecting my chosen forms of illusion is a way of taking greater control over my own life rather than escaping it. I can tell the “realists” who call me nothing but a dreamer to . . . watch a movie . . . read a story . . . write a poem. Get real by way of study of the dream within the dream.

Edited 12-21-2006. —BK

“I want to start a revolution of kindness.”

I still think kindness is important, though that particular revolution was started at other times by much more qualified people than I. The biggest reason I quit using it as my signature line was, I began to think people looked at those words and thought “bleeding heart liberal” or “easy mark” — or they saw it as just plain cheesy. I became self-conscious about it.

Why? Why do we think of kindness as uncool, naive, or unrealistic?

I sometimes think we’ve become victims of our own twisted ideas about social victimology. We assume that someone is out to get us unless we get them first, that few people mean us well, that if a stranger acts kind he must have some ulterior motive. We’re more and more cautious, even about answering the phone or watching an ad on TV. And whom to vote for? Oh my gosh. What do they want now? What are they really saying? Who’s going to smile first, and will they really mean it?

Maybe I spend too much time online, where anonymity seems to bring out the worst in people. Or I watch too many violent movies, or read too much news. What is the reality of kindness in our world today? Is the world in fact much more peaceful, live-and-let-live, and even kind than I perceive?

Money comes first these days, if not in the minds of individuals then at least in the goals of the boss, the media, the government, and seemingly everyone we do business with. Try talking to a car salesman about kindness, and his eyes will glaze over. To him, kindness is me buying a car from him. But there I go, with my own victimology, perceiving him as unkind because he’s doing his job. I assume that’s all he’s about. Ignoring kindness becomes a self-perpetuating circle, because when I ignore it in others, I deplete its value. I find myself doing this too often online, out in the world, and even sometimes at home.

Today I came across an interview with Sharon Salzberg on Beliefnet titled, Is It Uncool To Be Kind? in which she explored that question. Salzberg believes that kindness takes a “5th-class status” these days. But she sees kindness as a force, a kind of empowering personal skill with which each of us influences the world, and she insists that practicing kindness is the key to our happiness.

So what ever happened to kindness? Can you be kind and still be cool? Cynicism, fear, illness, injury, resentment, greed, anger, poverty, lack of trust, pain, grief, and far too many other negative experiences, which we all have in one form or another, undermine our ability to see through other people to their innate humanness, and their kindness. Those are heavy things to work through. Sometimes they seem impossible to overcome. They fog our view of the world and each other. But maybe that’s just because we haven’t practiced focusing on kindness recently, haven’t replenished our own kindness centers — by opening our hearts. I still believe most people have a wealth of kindness inside them, and I think that being kind is the simplest way to draw others’ kindness out. When engaged in skillfully, the practice of kindness becomes a continuous exchange that all parties always gain from. How amazing is that? Why is kindness so powerful? Because it’s compassion — unconditional love — and that is the most powerful force in the universe when allowed to flow. Held inside it sours, stagnates, and becomes a mere shadow of itself, an anxious need, a sick, wasting hunger. It’s the one form of wealth in the universe that’s impossible to overspend and deadly to hoard.

So, who’s going to smile or say something kind first? The best thing about kindness is, that doesn’t matter. Because as soon as one person expresses it, the other is more likely to.

Maybe a little kindness revolution now and then is a good thing. I know I could use more practice.

“Who?” you ask.

“Poetry,” I whisper.

Those of you who’ve read Shadows Fall have probably guessed that I’m a huge fan of William Wordsworth and Emily Brontë. I’m a poetry fan, all the way around. I love dead poets, old poets, young poets, and poets yet to be born. While writing that novel, I feared that I’d bore all the non-poetry fans with my unrelenting references to poems. I held back as best I could. For instance, I wanted to quote the entire body of Wordsworth’s “Daffodils,” and the entire portion I was then familiar with of Emily Brontë’s “The Prisoner.” Which reminds me, until recently I was only aware of five stanzas of that Brontë poem, beginning with:

“He comes with Western winds, with evening’s wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars:”

and ending with:

“When the pulse begins to throb—the brain to think again—
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.”

I’m not sure why, in my prior ignorance, I only read those five, when there are in fact many more. I’ll blame it on the printings I read, which must’ve been abridged. Those five stanzas comprise a complete poem in themselves, and they’re the ones I’m most at home with, so I hope the poet will forgive me taking my time to unearth and integrate the rest.

I’d quote all my favorite Wordsworth passages here, but that would take a book-length post, so I’ll leave it at my all-time favorite four lines:

“Hast thou seen with flash incessant
Bubbles gliding under ice,
Bodied forth and evanescent,
No one knows by what device?”

I don’t have my character Beth Gray’s gift of flawless memory, but I used to work at memorizing favorites, like a single stanza of Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality,” and as a teenager I copied into a journal numerous Emily Dickenson and Sara Teasdale poems. I jotted down poetic song lyrics, too. John Denver’s “The Wings That Fly Us Home” and Don McClean’s “Winterwood” come to mind, as well as Cat Stevens’ “Oh Very Young.” Song lyrics tend to go best with the music they were intended for, but the combination is a kind of poetry, with the power to touch our depths or carry us away.

One happy discovery of the past few years has been my introduction to the poems of Mary Oliver. Her tribute titled, “The Buddha’s Last Instruction,” inspires a vision of a sunrise, as well as the impression of a soul so ignited. (It can be found in her book, House of Light.) Don’t take my word for it, and don’t be satisfied with the tidbits available online. Mary Oliver is a living poet, and I encourage everyone to support living poets by buying their work. I feel thirsty for poetry just contemplating the title of her collection, Thirst. I long to gather her entire works, including her poetry and essays, immerse myself in poetic expression, then join forces with the cosmic rendering of words into new forms: She’s also written two books on writing, A Poetry Handbook and Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse.

You might like her poetry as much as I do, or you might want to try the works of any number of other living poets, such as Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, John Ashbery, or Annie Dillard.

If all language had to be delivered as poetry, I’d be too silent (some people think I already am), because I’m so in awe of the great poets. I’d spend my attention listening to them, and never think what to say myself. But there’s no point in those of us who are less gifted remaining silent, when letting one’s words take wing requires practice. Think what a lovely world that would be — all poetry.

We live in a filthy world of our own making, mostly made filthy through our mental twists on reality. It seems strange to me sometimes that when we’re out in wild places no amount of dirt seems out of place, yet in our neighborhoods and especially in our houses it can feel as if the whole of nature is intent on affronting our sense of cleanliness and order. Though my sense of order is weaker than some, I know everyone who lives indoors develops some degree of this need for order. Even the cat, to whom the state of her litter box and blankets matters a great deal, and the dog, who will go through all kinds of personal agony to wait to go outside to perform certain functions (thank God—or should that be Dog), and who gets nervous when I rearrange furniture in the living room. They like their people to be securely in place, too. He got so he knew the sound of my suitcase zipper when I used to travel for work, and would come into the bedroom when he heard it, to give me this look that made me feel like the worst kind of traitor. They both seem to go into fits when we so much as drive to the store, if we’ve been home a lot and they’ve grown used to that. When we return they greet us as returning heroes, and later the dog ceremoniously sniffs the soles of our shoes as if to learn where we’ve been—the usual places, or somewhere strange and exotic?

Orderliness is important to all of us who live under the umbrella of civilization. Not so much in nature, where a broken branch may hang by a thread for two seasons before falling to the ground and lying there for several more, gradually contributing its substance to the soil—what the ants don’t carry away or the termites consume. Maybe that’s order, too, in its way, and our skewed notion of order twists our perception of what is out of place, what must be plucked or added to the woodpile, burned in here so it doesn’t burn or rot out there.

The work of an artist or a writer requires some residual sense of the disorder in nature. A Japanese gardener calculates his design to mimic nature, if in a scrupulous, disorder-bending fashion. A painter avoids symmetry in her compositions. Some of the most amazing paintings I’ve seen depict skies full of drama rather than peace, states of cloud that in real life would make me wish we had a storm cellar. My favorite part of any piece of music is often full of drama, that exquisite break after a heart-rending crescendo. A writer fills his story with conflict, unresolvable problems and sympathetic characters full of flaws who perform acts we would never consider in real life. Why do we love this in artwork? Deep down, do we know everything isn’t supposed to be orderly all the time?

What is all this fuss over cleanliness and order? Can we carry it too far? Is that the reason that now, when our indoor world is in many ways its most orderly, we crave violence in the movies—and it increases in the streets? Is our twisted sense of order what makes us think we should control which two consenting adults marry, and push our religious or political agendas on others? Is it what makes us build walls at borders and regulate language? Is it what makes some people hoard wealth? Is it behind addiction and pornography?

Should order stop at the walls of our own houses? Is order’s purpose simply to help us feel secure in the future of meals to come, fresh water to drink, mortgages paid up? Do we try to make it fool us into thinking we’ll never die? Does it mimic the cycles of the seasons, the regularity of rainfall and harvest? Did order arise along with agriculture? Or did we find it in the vast movement of stars as we navigated seas full of monsters? What is it about order that lends us so much peace that we grow irritable or confused without it? Why do we grow a little insane from too much of it? Does it carry a deeper meaning? Is God order, or is God chaos? Or is God both, a balance, yin and yang? Where should we draw the line? Should there be a line?

Maybe I’ll draw the line today at leaving the vacuuming for tomorrow. It’s late, getting hot out, time to close the windows. Or is that too orderly, keeping the heat out and the cool in? I need to find my balance.

***

To me being privileged means having more than one’s basic needs met, and there are degrees of privilege, and it is relative, and basically meaningless. I’m more privileged than some people I know, and less privileged than some I know. But all I can really say about that is what I see on the surface.

It’s tragic that so few people in the world have adequate food, water, sanitation, shelter, clothing, necessary transportation, education, rest, safety, security, and health care, even some people in the US. Those should be basic, subsistence level expectations, especially considering how far we’ve come technologically in this world. Unfortunately those advances seem to be reserved for the wealthiest people in the wealthiest countries, for those living under certain forms of government and economics. Basic civil and human rights should also be considered subsistence level—everyone should have them. Not everyone does, even in the most economically “privileged” countries. We can’t even agree on what civil and human rights people should have.

But I also think many people in the world have a skewed notion of what it is to live under what they consider privilege (i.e. better apparent economic or social conditions than theirs). It looks easier. In many ways it is. It’s no guarantee one will be happy.

Comfort exists on many levels. People in wealthier conditions still get sick (health care doesn’t guarantee health), suffer, die, lose loved ones, fall in and out of love, get abused, depressed, lonely, fearful, deal with pain (much of it hidden and not obvious to anyone else—some physical, some psychological or emotional). They experience disability, addiction, disasters, worries, or slip through the cracks of their society. Many so-called privileged people live very unhappy lives, or don’t only because they overcome adversity no one else would guess at. Just because some people have their basic subsistence levels met in ways that too many in the world don’t, doesn’t guarantee they won’t still lead difficult or even miserable lives. Conversely, among those who don’t even have what we consider the basics, you’ll find some fairly happy people.

A lot of this may have to do with choice, though much of it doesn’t, but let’s face it, being privileged doesn’t guarantee you’ll make the right choices—or that your family members will. Some of this also has to do with individual thresholds. Some of us handle certain types of stress more easily, some have chronic health issues, and some have an inability to think we have choices, even when we do.

So the idea of “privilege” doesn’t really tell you how much one will suffer or how happy one will be.

No one can know another’s pain. We can try, we can develop our empathy and compassion to a deeper level and care about others, try to walk in another’s shoes. But we don’t live the other’s life. To judge what another considers his or her suffering, abuse, or pain, is simply judgmental and likely unjust. Privilege is relative, and can exist right alongside extreme suffering.

So in many ways privilege as we think of it is pretty much meaningless. It seems to me that instead of nurturing a notion of being privileged or not (as if one should feel guilty for being what others consider privileged), it’s more important to nurture compassion, unconditional love, mutual concern. This isn’t to say there isn’t a grossly unbalanced distribution of wealth and power in this world. Obviously there is. It’s also clear that a wealthy person in a position of power is more likely to help his wealthy peers than those he doesn’t consider his equals. But we have to be careful of what we allow to separate us, of allowing ourselves an “us and them” mindset.

The idea of measuring privilege separates us.

The idea of all people belonging to the same human family with equal rights to the basics, and with equal capacity for suffering and happiness, connects us.

***

What does privilege mean to you?

And while we’re at it, Happy Independence Day!

How you can go for years without eating something you did as a kid, but one smell or one taste will roll back the years?

How you forget others’ suffering if not exposed to it regularly, and can forget there are others less fortunate, even among friends and family?

How we remain acutely aware there are others more fortunate? How we all feel poor at some point, and blame others for it, but when we see another as poor we tend to think it’s their own doing?

How physical pain may be forgotten, but emotional wounds are not? How we don’t notice when we wound others, but they do? How easy it is to wound with words or even a look without realizing it, without even meaning it? How long it takes resentment to fade, once we feel it?

How touchy we all are about different things? How you never really know what another’s soft spot is until you accidentally brush against it? How sometimes you wish that information had been tattooed on their forehead?

How florists’ flowers just don’t smell the same?

How the drone of bees can be musical, until they come too near?

How gardens smell like honey on warm days?

How limitless the sky’s blue is? How we look for that limitlessness in others’ eyes?

How many words of yours your dog or cat knows, and how few you know of his?

How no matter how annoyed we may be to hear a person use “he” or “she” instead of the other, we’re all incensed if someone calls a person or pet “it” and we correct them at once?

How goddess-like or god-like the being next to you is? The glow of spirit in another’s face?

Late in 1993, after a lot of discouraging experiences attempting to sell my fiction, I decided to “quit fiction writing for good” and I wrote nothing but personal journals and technical manuals for a year. I began writing fiction again early in 1995, but with a difference. I did it, as I’d begun as a girl, to please myself, primarily to complete a story I thought had to be written or it would drive me nuts. That story had been percolating inside me since I was seventeen. I surprised myself then by doing some of the best fiction writing I had in my life to that point. My decision at that point to please only myself with what I wrote carried me through a kind of barrier into a different way of looking at writing fiction.

There’s a point where the writer has to throw out all the advice, all other opinions, and write the story that’s inside her, the one that haunts her, that begs to be written. If she begins to do it only to earn money or fame, her enthusiasm may dampen. If she exposes her writing to the wrong kinds of criticism at the wrong time, her passion may be crushed, or she may write more to please others than herself—sometimes so many others that she feels pulled in all directions at once. I’ve done that in the past, and I found myself doing it again recently—writing to please too many others. Maybe from time to time I need to “give up” again, if only to get back on track with the writing I’m supposed to do.

Of course the writer needs to learn the basics, hone her skills. Then, after writing for self, she needs to be willing to let someone edit her work and be open to revisions. The two-minute rule mentioned in the blog Eric referred to makes sense, too. Something in any story needs to draw the reader’s interest in as soon as possible, unless the writer just wants to hide her novel in a drawer and bring it out to read on her own now and then.

But I think a writer needs to begin any work of fiction out of love, a personal hunger to write it. Something has to draw the writer in, make it worth the effort, and perhaps make it impossible not to write. It may very well break the writer’s heart. In fact, maybe a writer has to let a story break her heart a little to do it right. Maybe fiction is meant to break out of one’s heart, the way love does. I usually know I’ve gotten somewhere or succeeded at something in a manuscript, when I find it brings me to some deep, heartfelt emotion.

Writing for myself sounds selfish and not very businesslike, but I think my best writing happens when I do. I’ve learned the most about myself when writing this way, and it’s the most honest writing I’ve done.

Themes emerge in what we write, truths we’ve learned about life show up in our stories, and we sometimes come face to face with our own humanity when we realize what we’re capable of imagining, when we think about what we’d do in the situations we place our characters in. These are things that don’t show up in a story intentionally, but in unconscious, serendipitous ways, through the interlocking and intersecting of seemingly disparate elements. The best writing is in many ways a revelation to the writer as much as to the reader. If getting to that necessitates shutting out what others want from our fiction, it’s worth the effort.

I can’t tell anyone how to make money writing fiction. It’s possible no one can tell anyone how. Publishers seem as mystified as anyone as to what will pay off and what won’t. But I do know how to plumb my own heart while writing, how to answer the call of a story. That’s what has kept me doing this so long in spite of all my frustrations and failures. If all I wanted were to make money, I’d have quit—for real and for good—long ago. I don’t advise anyone to write fiction for money. I plan from now on to write fiction that draws me in a way I can’t ignore and can’t resist. Even so, I know it may break my heart. But anything worthwhile in life carries that risk.

“A wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope didn’t kill you. It didn’t even make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems—you ceased hoping your problems would somehow get solved through the magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself—and you just began doing whatever it takes to solve those problems yourself.”

I recommend the article, and I’m interested in Jensen’s book because the way I see it is this:

I don’t entirely agree that hope is useless, but hope isn’t worth squat unless it’s the basis for action. I think too many people today hope someone else will save the world for them. They go on with their lives, too busy, too harried, too unconvinced of the enormity and urgency—and even the growing hopelessness—of the problem to do anything about it. They want everything to be as easy as it comes to them on TV.

It’s better to read Dave’s article, and all the words he shares from the excerpt of Jensen’s book.