A Moment of Clarity

It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day. Work recently has been hectic, frustrating, stressful. Nothing new there: that’s the experience of working during late-stage capitalism and my day job, as my wife (a nurse) constantly reminds me, is cushy in comparison with many. Still, tunnel vision sets in and it feels like a cycle of struggling to shrug off the day in order to sleep, then struggling awake again far too soon, and counting down the minutes until the weekend.

Every once in a while, however, there are moments that remind me of my privilege, remind me how lucky I am to get to do these things that, lest I forget, I have chosen to do. These epiphanies, these moments of clarity, rare though they are, when they come stop me in my tracks and break me out of my tunnel vision. Not a light at the end of the tunnel, but a flashlight in the gloom.

I had one this week. I came back to my office after a particularly long and frustrating meeting, my “to do” list having grown in the meantime, dropped my stack of papers on the desk and collapsed into the armchair I keep in the corner for just such occasions. I removed my glasses, rubbed my eyes, and let me head fall to the side. There, now in my line of sight on the table, waiting for me like an oasis in the desert, was the printed manuscript of Larissa Reid’s new poetry collection. She sent it to me last weekend for a beta read, a fresh eye, the confirmation that what has, until now, been something that only exists between her and her computer, is good, publishable, ready. I printed it out because poetry on the screen is just so… unpoetic.

I couldn’t help but smile. It was one of those moments where I think, “if my younger self could see me now, he’d be happy.” There, on the table, waiting for me, is a fresh, crisp poetry collection that only a handful of people (I’m guessing) have seen yet. How lucky am I? Here I am, in my own office in a university in Japan, where I teach literature and creative writing, two things I’ve loved my entire life, friends with writers who let me read their books before they get published.

It’s a cliché that writing is a lonely business, but like all clichés, it’s true (a sentiment that is also clichéd). The community that builds up as a result of this inherent loneliness is one I value hugely. The general book-buying public never see the flurry of circulated manuscripts, What’sApp chats about character development, messages of encouragement from friends who know all too well what it is to be lost in a labyrinth of your own making, trying to find the way out into the sunlit uplands of published. The cutthroat, bitter, jealous publishing world of R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface is out there, but it’s not all there is. There’s also a collegiate world of artists looking out for each other, helping each other out when they can, reminding each other that while it’s solitary, we’re not doing it alone.

So I’ve been reading Larissa’s frankly excellent poetry collection, making odd notes in the margin, thinking (as requested) about the order of the poems and the combined effect. At the same time, I’ve been reading Simon Sylvester’s new manuscript, a stupendous speculative/supernatural novel. Simon took a break from writing fiction for a while, but is back, ten years since the publication of The Visitors, and by Christ is he back.

Again, how lucky am I? In amongst the daily grind I can read new work by two writers I would be a fan of even if they weren’t friends, and then chat about it with them. Simon and I are having a back and forth about how much to explain to a reader and it’s blowing the cobwebs away, lighting a fire. It’s Friday as I write this, the end of another long week, but I feel reinvigorated, aware of my privilege, and it’s thanks to these two writers sharing their work with me.

Scotland doesn’t have a thanksgiving, it’s too twee an idea for us miserable fuckers, but today I am feeling thankful, reminded of all those shafts of sunlight breaking through the fog. I’m focusing on the text I got from a coworker reading Life is Elsewhere/Burn Your Flags, the tweet from a complete stranger on the other side of the world who picked up The Japan Lights, the fact that Suzanne Kamata went to the trouble of going to the post office and posting me her copy of a journal because I needed something in it for a paper I’m writing. Random acts of writing related kindness.

Yes, I need a break. Yes, I need some sleep. But if I could tell my younger self that in my forties I’d be making a living from books—teaching them, editing them, writing them—he’d be chuffed. And that’s just about enough to carry me through to the weekend.

[The photo at the top, by the way, comes from the Katherine Mansfield House & Garden museum in Wellington, New Zealand).