Disclaimed

Characters seem to be exempt from morality. Mariel Nicosovic--as a character, not a human being--has no obligation to notice or work to alleviate the poverty in her backyard, or to reflect on the absurdly inflated death rate around the corner from her mansion. It is her duty as a character, only existing from the outside, to tirelessly spend her efforts on the upkeep of her preposterously large house, hiring people to train the domestic help, ignoring her kids, buying new boots every season, and appearing at important social functions, all within the same universe--the same zip code--as young black men who are more likely to either murder or be murdered than learn long division.

The premise is: M.N. does not care about the cycle of violence. But that's okay, because she has such a distinct personality.

To tell a story--a made-up one--about a world of people whom the plot depends on to be ridiculous and nonsensical is to detach oneself from the events and to wash one's hands clean of moral responsibility. In other words, a plot that derives from its characters' inability to act humanely condones immorality by immortalizing it.

Is it necessary to be a solipsist for your life to be a good story?

For instance, the novel Trainspotting is about a bunch of heroin addicts. If they all made the right decision (to stop using heroin), there would be no Trainspotting. Trainspotting, arguably, is a good thing--first, if only because it is a book, and books are objectively and inherently good; and second, because it is a good book, well-written, innovative, imaginative, highly enjoyable, insightful. Why is it acceptable to suspend morality for the higher cause of a good book? It only encourages suspending morality in one's own life. Either: it is necessary to have an outlet, a way of exploring the path, the results of immorality, so that people do not suppress their wandering thoughts; or, it is an atrocity to invent evil and bring it so close to daily life that it is at times hardly separable. Or, people who are most susceptible to the invented immorality of novels are the least likely to read them, so it doesn't matter.

thoughts on the isolate

Today I came to a realization so startling that it can only be described as blog-worthy, I suppose (I mean that tongue-in-cheek, but it's true that this is my first time using The Hour as a journal). Anyway, at training this afternoon we had to say something about ourselves that people wouldn't know by looking at us, so I said I was born deaf, because it was the most interesting thing I could think of that didn't sound like I was bragging. It occurred to me (hours later) that people might have taken that to mean I was deaf for several years, or something, because I neglected to explain that it was due to an ear infection, not deafness as a curse itself, and only lasted a couple weeks. For those same reasons, of course, I almost never think about it. But while playing the piano and silently cursing my ringing ear I suddenly saw it from a different perspective: "I got my hearing back. It's not perfect, but I don't know what I did to get it back at all."

What black thing should I wear today? wondered Jessi, coming dangerously close to wry self-awareness before being distracted by her reflection. She was painfully close yet still acutely far from realizing that she could fulfill the dual roles of spectator and star simply by talking, and listening, to someone.

You might wonder, what was Joel doing in Ghana that whole time? Why, he was writing a poem. He scribbled it from start to finish in one sitting, then spent the next two months tirelessly revising it; then he copied it for his own records on the back of a pay stub and put it in a hardcover Zadie Smith novel for safekeeping.


I was right: I broke the chains
(or stretched them) and reached the edge--clearly I saw
not the sun but the inside of yet a larger cave. With larger shadows

Like kittens raised in darkness I have only ever seen the cave wall. For one thousand years I have only seen a cave wall. Did my eyes develop only to the contours of a cave wall? Can
I see anything else? I can imagine something else--

The kittens, at least, are unafraid of darkness. I myself am quite accustomed. In fact, the darkness even takes shape for me and my eyes see light around it--

Who's hallucinating? I don't see anything that's not here. I think.

I reattach the chains, return to my place, content (deny)
having something to want.

The important thing is not to get arrogant. (How did I know what a sun was?)