Writing God

The Torah begins, “When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void…[etc, etc].” In my heathen opinion, this says that the creation of something starts with something. That something is really nothing, though. But that something is going to be more than what it was originally. As you can see, my career as a Rabbi was cut short. If you’re a writer, you might think of it this way:  “When Writing God began to create tension and plot—the plot being unformed and void, with a white page over the surface of the deep… and Writing God said, ‘Let there be… um… I guess I could write that story about the narrator being a ghost and not knowing it.’ And so it was!” The most famous story (biblical tale) is of course of Franz Kafka (The Writing One, Blessed Be He) telling his best friend (disciple) (St.) Max Brod to burn his work (on the holy altar) when he died (and eventually would resurrect), but Brod would come to publish the work. We are all writing gods with empty page memories that start as nothing, but with the potential to begin with a first line. The words ‘void’ and ‘unformed’ are worrisome though. They mark a beginning that might never live up to its intended end. It could drive a writer to want his work to be sent back to the dust.

How to say it?  In Devin Johnston’s book Creaturely And Other Essays, the question of how to say it is addressed as other-worldly, beyond the human.  Not God, but on the wavelength of animals.  Johnston is a poet, but his book is a collection of essays about him observing the nature of St. Louis on his walks that escape closed-in spaces.  His language is often short, exact, and leaves the reader with the sense each line was an effort in perfection.  A writer who is trying to find those right words. And with those right words, there is a personal style that might turn off readers. The beautiful swoop of an owl really has nothing to do with the vomiting of a homeless man below him. But with that fluid and exquisite flight, there are the words which resonate a singular experience.

But beyond the selection of words, Johnston relies on perception. In his essayCreaturely, Johnston states, “If sight is evidential (I saw it with my own eyes), smell moves us closer to essences.” Sight only takes us so far.  Even though sight is a certain truth (evidential), it misses many underlying aspects of life.  For humans, smell is not the most notable of traits when compared to other animals.  Johnston combines time and experience to show conception in the world.  He quotes Aidan Higgins: “Is it even possible to think of somebody in the past?”  Johnston explains that sight can see the difference between what is now and what is gone, but it is smell that “baffles time” —the object is not here, but its essence remains.  When one views the world as a confusion of what is in some senses here but not, and considers that what we objectively perceive is translated through subjective sensory input, without the awareness of other senses and senses that humans don’t even have, then it leaves one grasping for the right words.

Johnson sees the world as the inversion of anthropomorphism: we shouldn’t perceive the world as human.  I don’t believe he means for us to flap our pretend wings at night and eat bugs in the air, rather each animal has unique features that open the world through the different ways they experience time and with the senses and behaviors they use to translate their environments. With science, it’s possible to understand how crows learn and what squirrels can map. With enough observation, a group could gather like starlings. But I’m still bothered. The way we use science, the way we learn, is human. And before you bomb this website with dolphins and bonobos, just know that no other animal wants to write like humans do. No other animal wants to pencil and paper their world or sit at campfires to explain the deep crack in the earth near their village. Maybe all animals have words or calls and their own flavors of cognition, but maybe humans are the only ones to question what they call.

How to say it? Some artists were convinced that the only way to truly experience the world is through the innocence of an infant. His senses are pure and new; the world is writing on a fresh piece of baby paper. Others asked, “What is the mind?” Such a question ignored if mind even existed or if it was the right question to begin with. Others wrote pieces with the help of opium, a supposed gateway to believed new perceptions. But the underlying thought is that humans are on the outside of a fenced-off community village. A belief that one must get through the fence to find all the goodies one lacks and to have a final “a-ha!” moment of release. But when it comes to cognition, it is what it is. Our brains, like all animals, have evolved in a certain way, and that’s how they will stay. And I say they will stay the same so as not to predict our evolutionary future, which is another pipe dream. Cognitive tests show what the majority of people will most likely perceive. Dan Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist, shows these tests in his TED talks and, in general, does a good job proving that what we want to perceive is not always the truth. To constantly hope for a way beyond our own humanity is fantasy.

I’m falling down the rabbit hole to keep up.  When Alice fell, was it that it was deep or that she was falling slow?  She has knowledge of the world, but as she falls, is it the right knowledge?  In the rabbit hole, in the vacuum of our own world, we assume, and inside, a glimmer hopes it is right.  I often sit in the dark and fold my hands to hear nothing in the world, to quiet my mind, in hopes that I will be ready for the right words.  But I’m okay if there are no words at all in the void of my own writing god.