uncertainty is an evocative state
When painting, vacuousness is often necessary for wholeness. Emptiness is as important as filling the canvas. A wide vista of space, to open up to the void and let something true and real pour out. Or to let God rush in.
My life is built on extremely long feedback loops.
To be sure, they’re of my own choosing. I like to be in it for the long haul. Sometimes this is frustrating. You get stuck treading water for an indeterminate period of time. In writing, at my job, all my pursuits hinge on delayed gratification. This doesn’t mean they’re ill-fitted, just that sometimes it’d be nice to get a quick win, or some signal that what I’m doing is right. Instead I find myself floating adrift in a lovely ocean of unknowing.
Staying centered, calm and equanimous when there’s a lot of uncertainty means staying pinned to my values rather than wriggling out of them in impatience. It means: writing and writing, through years of imperceptible improvement. It means digging my heels in and taking a stake, a hefty position, even when the payoff or feedback is five or ten years out. It means being a good shepherd of my present choices because I am sovereign to them in the fullness of time.
The horoscopes and prediction markets and tarot cards ask you to suspend the present moment for a sweet propulsion of the future. Lately I’ve been taking the opposite path. I’m trying to savor not knowing, not getting squeamish, not losing my nerve. I don’t have the next token prediction. I don’t know how this sentence, or narrative, will end. It’s deeply humbling when I reflect upon my carefully laid plans and recognize that none of them ever panned out the way I had begged on my knees for them to. In fact, deviation from plan was where real magic began.
There’s a short story from Greg Egan’s science fiction collection called Closer that I think about all the time, which discusses the pursuit of perfect knowledge. In this case, of another person. A couple, Michael and Sian, decide to try a new technology that allows them to share consciousness with one another in order to feel closer to one another. I could not, for one second, imagine what it was like inside her head, Michael says forlornly, Even in the laughably crude sense that a novelist pretends to “explain” a character, I could not have explained Sian.
The lack of explainability, or the unknowability, of each other bothered them. So they swapped minds and bodies. In doing so, perfect knowledge had the opposite effect of deepening the relationship. It broke it apart.
Reading it made me realize just how much love’s edge, its faith, is anchored on mystery and the quest to get closer as a process to enjoy in itself. To contend with the fundamental unknowability of another requires revision, faith, tolerance. The eruption of the Other shatters your fantasies. At its very best, you are continually surprised. Someone can change, and will change, so you must renew your understanding with richness and warmth. Ursula Le Guin: Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.
Can we apply that kernel of thought to a wider horizon? If so, then we can learn to view uncertainty or unknowability not as a tolerable, or acutely painful, but evocative and generative state.
Uncertainty isn't something to just endure, but actively brings forth creativity and deeper connection. In work, in life. You make a few turns, not knowing which way is right or wrong, but each time you get slightly more precise. Precision compounds. You give yourself the benefit of the doubt. You commit to occupy difficult emotions. You release your expectations in order for things to reveal themselves to you. It’s a hopeful reminder that you haven’t yet met all the people who will mean something to you, or all of the ideas that will take root and bloom in your heart.
The principle feature of reality is that the impossibly sweet emerges just beyond the bend of the visible. When you can’t recognize the particular configuration of twists in the full open road ahead, you just have to keep your hands calmly on the wheel.
I’ve released my egoic narrative that I know exactly what is good for me. It’s better to be open like a child. The sublime doesn’t require you to know all the dance moves. Ecstasy often lies beyond assumption. I don’t try to quiet the questions in my head. I accept that I will have them. I won’t know the answers, and I’ll still be okay. Will this effort pan out? Will we love each other to the end? Will the masterpiece be beautiful? Am I ready for what comes next?
I haven’t done these in a while!
I’ll be in Vancouver, CA for a good portion of the month.
In SF I have been doing long runs + exploration days and I’ve been hosting run clubs for personal friends - inspired by J and Z in New York. Here’s an example itinerary I just did: Sunday run from panhandle to Stow lake to Spreckels lake - and then run through to Clement (~6 miles), hit up the Clement St. Farmers Market, stop into stores like Park Life and Green Apple Books, Dumpling King for great dumplings, end at Arsicault for a pastry.
I’m going to FWB this year and probably writing a piece or two on it. If you’re around, say hi :)
I do not write every day, I read every day, think every day, work in the garden every day, and recognize in nature the same slow complicity. The same inevitability. The moment will arrive, always it does, it can be predicted but it cannot be demanded. I do not think of this as inspiration. I think of it as readiness.
Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects
Lots of books to update you on! I finished 4 books of Herman Hesse’s, my two favorites were Glass Bead Game and Narcissus and Goldmund. For lighter reads:
It Chooses You by Miranda July which is heartwarming, funny and touching - interviews with a random selection of the ad booklet PennySaver sellers.
The Portrait of a Mirror by A. Natasha Joukovsky on dual love affairs between two wealthy and glitzy New York couples - on narcissism and desire.
Like Life by Lorrie Moore. “In Like Life, Lorrie Moore's characters stumble through their daily existence. These men and women, unsettled and adrift and often frightened, can't quite understand how they arrived at their present situations….But whether rejected, afraid to commit, bored, disillusioned or just misunderstood, even the most hard-bitten are not without some abiding trust in love.”
She crafts very beautiful sentences. Example below:
All that had overtaken her would have to be a memory, a truck on the interstate roaring up from the left, a thing she must let pass.
Too excited to see Lucy Dacus in August - my two favorite songs of hers are Best Guess and VBS.
love Vancouver. highly recommend Cafe Medina for brunch, if you can make it.
What you said about the importance of mystery in relationships reminds me of Esther Perel's book "Mating in Captivity". Familiarity breeds...if not contempt, at least complacency. My take on this is that it is important to keep a growth mindset, always striving to learn more about ourselves, about each other, and about our interests. Thus we change from year to year and the mystery remains fresh.