Essay Absentia

I’m approaching the fifth anniversary of a daily writing practice. I have a favorite pen (EnerGel Pentel, needle tip), pad (8½ x 11, narrow ruled), perch (the desk in my home office), and time of day (first thing on waking.) Nearly two years ago, I launched “Uncertain Times,” my Substack page, with the goal of publishing weekly. Most of my posts are at the intersection of essay and memoir, “essoir” as I call it, although most know it as the personal essay. I published 52 times in the first year, but I’m missing the weekly mark this year.

Que pasa?

Writing, for me, is an act of self-expression, often of exploration, a search for words for inchoate sentiments or for order in random thoughts. At times, there’s something I need to say. At others, I write in search of that something or in response to that need. On some treasured days, I find answers to questions I didn’t know I was asking, some order in chaos, some new meaning. Writing as sense making.

In these uncertain times, it’s hard to make sense of so much senselessness, so much that affronts the senses. I’m overwhelmed by the challenge. Of late, I’ve forgotten to honor what Winston Churchill taught about such times: When you’re going through hell, keep going. Instead, I’ve surrendered, stopped mid-sentence or mid-paragraph, ignored the power of the pen, the pad, the perch, the practice.

This essai (noun, French, attempt or trial) is an act of faith, begun without knowing where it will go or end, but an affirmation that it is the going that matters, even – perhaps especially – through hell.

The hell of a dear friend who just lost her son. The hell of friends and family members with Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s. The hell of their spouses grieving the daily confrontation with losing a life partner, even as they are needing to rise to meet the all-day/every-day demands of caretaking.

And there but for fortune go you or I. (Phil Ochs)

The hell of our nation, indeed many nations, sinking into authoritarianism. The U.S. Coast Guard announced that it no longer regarded swastikas and nooses as symbols of hate. The Republican party is in the thrall of a madman and in the hands of oligarchs. We have a President whose cruelty, crudeness, and malevolence knows no bounds. And there’s the frightening reality that we, the people, elected him.

The Democrats are disconnected from their roots and can’t find their way in the political landscape. Democrats, progressives in particular, are enamored of the power of multiple deeply held values but ignore the value of strategically growing power, a fatal mistake in politics.

So much to make sense of. So much that’s senseless, nonsense, insensitive, incomprehensible.

How to make sense? How to make sentences?

I’m grateful for friends and family who have checked in to see if I’m okay and to say they miss my regular Tuesdays with Substack. I do too.

Maybe the point of this essai is that I have a pen, not a magic wand. I might want my words to solve a problem, relieve some pain, restore order, or give hope. But when they don’t – or maybe can’t – there’s still virtue in sentence making – willful witnessing of the uncertainty, of struggles and stumbles through hell. It may be that simple. But this is, at times, easier said than done. While I might wish it otherwise, evade and avoid sometimes triumph over write and rewrite. And so they have. Missing my weekly target isn’t fatal or final. But recommitting to it has power and magic in it. And this I do. Occasional interruptions notwithstanding, the journey continues.