Before we dig in, I invite you to enjoy this bouquet. The cuttings in this arrangement may or may not be new to you. Many are only new to me in the sense that I encountered them from fresh angles last week as I edited, engaged, and wrote this newsletter:

What’s the connection between these things? Only that they gave me delight, and I wanted to share them with you. And they give me an excuse to bring up polymathy (being broadly educated).

I am an aspiring jack of many trades. I have never been content to invest all my energy in a solitary pursuit. Mathematics? Literature? Sociology? History? User Experience? Web Design? Language learning? Yes, please.

I love branching out like a tree in bloom. I love to drill down into superficially disconnected lands and find the subterranean channels coursing thick between these neighboring continents that are all truly one continent if we dive deep enough. And I believe this spirit of restless inquiry has enriched my skill as a writer, editor, and business owner, not to mention my appreciation for people and life.

I hope you feel inspired by today’s little riot of stimulus to embrace your own polymathy. What do you love? What are you curious about? Don’t be shy about following your digressions. And if you are a writer of any stripe, I encourage you to boldly put anything and everything onto the page in a first draft to see how it gets along. It may not all remain in an obvious form once your words find their final arrangement, but like pencil lines that have been erased, the mark of everything that crossed your page will always be felt there.

Ultreia et suseia!

It would be difficult for me to enumerate all the ways in which they seduce me to good and bad ends, but if I had to limit myself to two, I would name the power of words to invent (destroy) and their power to join (tear). Will you relate when I say that for as long as I have been aware of words, their magic has tormented me as often as it has delighted? Maybe, maybe not. Our diverse experiences of life and the responses birthed from our many, exotic manners of digesting all that rough matter are another part of this terrible and enticing mystery in which we all participate.

One thing I am certain we have in common, though, is that words are inextricable from life. As I pondered the quotes from the essay by Tanya Turneaure that I opened with, I discovered that my earliest memories of words resonate with her description. That is, my recollections of learning language are tangled with images and sensations. Events. Laying on my belly and clinging to light-devouring shag carpet with my little fists while my eyes raked over the strange, pulsing symbols in a board book. Sitting adrift on a carpet square raft of imagination while my classmates and I watched an illustrated recording of A Cricket in Times Square (the projector clicking and humming in the background). Turning the monumental pages of a Rankin-and-Bass illustrated version of The Hobbit (my mother claims I read it on my own at the age of 4, and I would love to believe her, but like so many of her incantations it may simply be a spell to cast affection … and that’s okay). Kneeling on a great pad of butcher paper on Sundays after church in my grandmother’s plastic gazebo, surrounded by a choir of adults swaying on lime green vinyl furniture and singing rumors about neighbors while below I summoned mountains and rivers and towns with a wand of crayon, channeling with my eager left hand the captivating maps I’d encountered in fantasy novels.

The first memory in that list is probably a pastiche. The pieces feel real to me but the way I put the shreds together gives me doubt. The rest of the memories I feel confident about, but the irony is that all of these early recollections are probably 90% fiction.

In spite of what I said earlier, I still worry sometimes about whether my memories are reliable. Other times I wonder whether I ought to be grateful they fade so that I am free to move out of then in order to spend more time in now.

And when it comes to writing down memories (or anything else, which finds its source material in memory)? Oh, boy. I could light a city with the glowering furnace of consternation in my gut any time I try to create in words an experience, a dialogue, a sensation. Are the words I’m composing summoning something real? I fret and fret. Will they strike an irrepressible vibrating chord of connection with the reader? Does that connection sound true or only pretty? And is the thing essential—uniquely mine and also relatable—or am I merely pouring poisoned notes of self-indulgence in people’s ears?

When I put on my editor hat, I experience a parallel version of this anxiety. The questions that arise for me then revolve around whether I can trust my editorial instincts to locate where the writer is most alive in their writing. Then I wonder whether my insights and suggestions to maximize that pulsing heart of the words are astute, clear, and actionable. Does the writer feel genuinely empowered to get more connected with themselves, their text, and their readers?

The theme I once again notice is connection versus disconnection. When it comes to acts of creation and refinement, I often wonder which direction I am moving in. But however true or false or lush or barren a constellation of words may be, I want to draw hope from Emily Dickinson’s basic axiom about truth told slant. And I invite you to ponder the same comfort: that as long as we cultivate our words with sincerity and courage, even a flawed or fanciful composition contains truth.

Getting back to my first memories of words, I’m certain I recall a palpable thrill each time I read something new, and also when I began to write my own stories. I don’t even want to contest this recollection. My exultation arrived as early as grade 1, thanks to a teacher I don’t remember anything about except that she assigned her class to write stories. Amazing! Whenever my little mind shaped glyphs on the page—my own or others’—into sounds and meanings, I felt in my body how life became bigger. Through this arcane faculty called language I was conjuring a magical place or, in the spirit of the computer game MYST, traveling to one—and that place was suffusing me, turning me into a magical person.

What have words meant to you? What spells did (or do) they cast? To what reality do you hope those words will carry you?

And really: if you have any desire today to feel transported, then I urge you to read her loving and lyrical ruminations. Her words certainly put me under a spell, and I hope they impart a bit of magic to you, too.

For a brief lesson in craft, Tanya’s essay is also a brilliant example of how to draw on diverse subject matter while grooming a careful train of thought that elegantly progresses from topic to topic. To the uninitiated the essay may seem to wander, but in reality it is a well-constructed labyrinth.

I won’t spoil your chance to discover her beautiful writing for yourself. I’ll only note, for purposes of this conversation, that it includes thoughts on poetry, a child’s visceral experience of words, and whether an adult might return to a childlike state under the right conditions.

While I was writing this newsletter, Tanya’s train of thought reminded me of a book by Northrop Frye I read many years ago called The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. When I retrieved this book to try and pinpoint why my mind made that leap, I encountered on the very first page these words: “A sacred book is normally written with at least the concentration of poetry, so that, like poetry, it is closely involved with the conditions of its language” (Frye p. 3, emphasis added).

Not long after positing this, Frye shares a theory which he attributes to a 17^th century Italian philosopher named Giambattista Vico. Vico, Frye says, believed that history passes through three phases, the first of which is mythical. Each stage of history is characterized by a distinct species of language, and the language which coincides with the mythic age is poetic.

How does Frye characterize the poetic language of the mythic epoch? “In this period there is relatively little emphasis on a clear separation of subject and object: the emphasis falls rather on the feeling that [they] are linked by a common power or energy…. The articulating of words may bring this common power into being; hence a magic develops in which verbal elements, ‘spell,’ and ‘charm,’ and the like, play a central role. A corollary of this principle is that there may be a potential magic in any use of words” (Frye p. 6).

Wow—mic drop.

Here’s how I read this train of thought. Sacred books aspire to bridge the tragic gulf between mundane and divine; to stitch ideas to reality and pull closed the gap between them so that humans may encounter—or reencounter—a figure or idea who animates and unites everything. These sacred books were consciously delivered in poetic form. This suggests to me a deliberate invocation of (or at least a reverence for) the magic inherent in words. And if Vico and Frye are correct, in that era, this connection was not symbolic or wishful thinking. For the people writing these books, there was no boundary between what was said (or written) and what the words referred to. To write or read was to know, to connect.

I’m certain I am not doing justice to Frye’s profound and sometimes baffling thoughts. Even if I had read the book yesterday, I’m sure I could not capture every nuance. But that’s not our goal today. Let’s move on (but I invite you to pick up his book. It’s a fascinating literary critique.)

I relish even more the realization that life has plunked me, twenty years later, back onto a path of thought that Turneaure pushes forward and enriches in unexpected and profound ways. I feel enticed by the promise of similar delightful, superrational collisions … and I think such occurrences become more likely when I ask language to pull me into the dancing, destructive, generative eye of its storm. The storm of creative connection.

I ran into Tanya on LinkedIn. (I would say not to start a short story with this sentence, but maybe your pen can make it work). If we push through the silicon weeds of mediation invoked by that flat and inspiration-draining name, “LinkedIn,” then we are able to notice that my having run into this fellow editor/writer and gotten caught up in her swirl of thought, then set down again in a distant yet familiar land, is proof that the mythical era is not dead. And it will never die, if we claim our agency as writers, editors, and creators of all stripes to preserve it.

Yes: even in a world of technocratic, plutocratic structures which invade so many corners of our life; even in forums designed to be aggressively disenchanting, we have the power to keep the magic of words alive. Ironically, the very fact of aggression to the contrary is proof. Why? If so much time and energy is invested in herding us toward disenchantment, then there must be another choice we could be making.

So as long as we take up the instrument of communication that suits us with one hand, and as long as we reach out with the other, there is no wall so high or gulf so wide that calling out and listening cannot overcome it.

Put more plainly, keep up your creative efforts! They matter. Whatever goals you have in mind for your writing or editing, take heart and satisfaction in knowing that you already help yourself and the world just by doing the work.

As I said at the top, creating and joining are two of the things I love most about words and life. And I constantly try to suffuse my business with the same. I say “try” because—and again I’m sure almost every writer or editor can relate, on or off of computers and social media—sometimes my work starts to feel too much like toil. I struggle to see creativity as a redeeming, embodied, social investment and start to perceive it as drudgery, depletion, and alienation. It feels a bit like strapping into the Skesis’ life-force-extraction machine.

In times like this my mind erroneously exchanges enthusiasm and belief for calculation and desperation. The magic of words devolves into an algorithm to mindlessly execute. Writing becomes a transaction: Will this move someone in exactly the way I want them to be moved? Will it impress them? Gain me a greater following? More peace of mind, pride, or self-confidence? It wouldn’t be accurate to say it’s a short trip from here to feeling dispirited and resentful, because the second I start asking such questions, I am already in that dark place.

What is your tragic disruption? Mine is when I stumble into a mindset of toil and all I can think about is how that toil must perform for me and yet seems to be failing to do so. In other words, disruption is diminishment of the agency with words I thought I owned, and also therefore diminishment of myself. Also in this state, I perceive that I am not in a place of hope and possibility (that carpet square where words were powerful and you and I were full of that power). So the disruption is also dislocation.

I think this malaise can strike any of us in all sorts of circumstances, but in the spirit of Turneaure’s words, I suspect we are most vulnerable to it when we’re engaged in creative pursuits. These are the parts of life we know deep down are most essential but which we are taught to see as “extra.” Writing, singing, making art, and so-called leisure activities. And leisure extends to any part of life we need but are urged by society and our own broken instincts to deprioritize, such as the work to build and maintain relationships.

All of these matters directly or indirectly involve words: our magical syntax for creating and connecting. And since words, as Tanya keenly perceives, are embodied in our flesh and experiences, when our faith in words is undermined, this does not just threaten our artistic ambitions. It endangers our hope in and ability to act on the idea that it matters just to be.

The fear that words and creative labor are fruitless may last a moment, but the tragic disruption can be cumulative. For me, it recurs each time I “remember” (or, more accurately, each time my brain conjures fabricated proof) that words are not magical, here is not special, and I am not really alive (in an essential sense). I will never forget, for example, the day when I was nine years old and discovered, to my intense disappointment, that I could not walk on the surface of a pool no matter how loudly I announced, “I believe I can walk on water.”

Do you ever pause in a moment of creative frustration, perhaps while working on a draft of a story or essay, and you look around and wonder, “What on earth am I doing?” Do you start to shudder as you wonder if perhaps you are nowhere and headed nowhere, trapped in some vast expanse of shadows, with no road before or behind you, no scenery to orient you, no companion to comfort or guide you, and no words powerful enough to break the spell of disenchantment?

For a more down-to-earth example, have you ever been rewriting a paragraph and you detour into one of those crazy-making revision loops where you can’t get the words to do what you need them to do? They’re not describing the scene as vividly as you want, or they’re not bringing the character to life on the page, or they’re not articulating your point as clearly as you see it in your head.

Or maybe your disruption is categorically different. Maybe you feel like your words do all of what they’re supposed to, and to a stunning degree … but to your dismay they don’t cast the same spell on another person.

I feel you. I’ve been there with you. And today I offer you a potential path out of that place. The simple idea I submit for your consideration is that disillusionment is optional and escapable. In terms of today’s to-do list and life at large.

This isn’t one of those “life is 99% attitude” speeches. Boy, did it suck when I surrendered to the idea that I couldn’t walk on water. Just like it sucked when the woman of my dreams told me I “was great, but not enough.” Not enough?! My worst fear. Diminishment and dislocation.

The “choice” to lose our grasp on the magic is often instinctive, defensive, and perfectly understandable, given how challenging it can be to wrangle our lives into something survivable (much less thriving) or our words into the radiant assembly on the page which we envision for them.

And as I said, modern society plays its corrosive part in convincing us that life is nothing but vacant toil and language is just as empty. (Apologies to whomever branded “LinkedIn,” but it sounds to my ears like the clank of manacles.) But to persist in seeing things in a hopeless way is a choice nonetheless. A predicament we don’t have to settle for.

I can’t tell you exactly what re-enchantment will look like for you. I can only offer that engaging in activities that re-strange life are crucial, I think. Fittingly to our mutual interest in words, we have a built-in highway to strangeness. For me, reading new perspectives restores magic. Writing with an open mind does, too. Travel, especially to a place I’ve never been before, gives me a superdose of magical perspective. But a lot of the time, re-enchantment is not immediate or effortless. Like writing, it is a form of work—the generative, substantive kind, even though it can feel like the toiling kind.

In my life, re-enchantment is most of the time a modest, incremental process that involves reexamining my thoughts and the conclusions I gravitate toward. I question why I file what I file under “magical.” I challenge myself to reconsider why I dismiss so many little things in daily life (like writing one or two paragraphs as opposed to an entire history-making novel) as “unremarkable.” I also ask myself who I really want to be as a writer and editor, and what I really want out of pursuing those vocations. As an author do I want the alienation of fame, or the vitality of small-scale connection? As an editor do I want money for any job at any cost, or do I want to make an empowering difference in the life and for the writing goals of a client who has a beautiful vision?

Often in this process of self-investigation I come to the surprising realization that my waking mind has been a double agent of disillusionment, sabotaging me and isolating me from my own faith in the brilliant fractal magic of words and life. I understand why my ego feels the need to protect me from hope and love. Magic comes with a cost. Faith invites in danger and pain along with discovery and joy. And sometimes it is hard to say, “All right, magic won’t manifest the way I hoped it would. I’ll shift gears and find joy in this other form of magic.”

But isn’t this all another way of saying, “That’s life”? And if this is what it takes—whether we’re writing a manuscript or going to the grocery store—and if the alternative is to sit passively and watch in morbid fascination as all the light and color drains from the world … then I pick life.

Language and our bodies, which store and deliver meaning, are our fundamental tools for “making” home and self. So there’s a sense in which the Judeo-Christian story of humanity’s fall from grace, and any moment in our lives when words feel empty of magic, are the same thing.

Words are tied up with our efforts to manifest life—to preserve whatever it is that we feel we must preserve, or to conjure into being whatever we feel is lacking. But more and more I ponder whether we do not already, in a very real sense, already have everything we need … if we would only allow ourselves to see it and embrace it.

Even Adam and Eve (the story goes), after they were chased out of the garden, still had their God. Which was more essential for them to a life infused with magic? The garden or the company of the being who created the garden and them—out of words? In a sense, wasn’t Eden merely a symbol of what original, untarnished, living, magical language could do; one example of one spell cast by a being whose company Adam and Eve never lost?

So was the lesson of suffering about literally not being in Eden, or was it about people who say to themselves, “I don’t think I’m in Eden”? Interestingly, suffering began for our protagonists before they left their garden. The business with the fruit was a primordial tragic disruption. Adam and Eve looked around and said, “What I am and what I have is not enough. I do not feel sufficient or sufficiently connected to magic. I need something else, and I need to do or say something else to make it happen.”

Appropriately, the second they lost faith in the magic that already accompanied them (in the form of their God and the language that person had bestowed on them), Adam and Eve lost that magic. They could not conjure with their now-vacant words and actions the disenchanted objectives they wanted to accomplish.

The symbolic lesson I’m reaching for here is not that creation or imagination is wrong, nor am I trying to draw a garden-variety religious conclusion. I’m trying to coax forth a cautionary insight about being seduced into disillusionment, and the unsatisfiable striving that results. In brief, for the purposes of this discussion, Adam and Eve’s tragic disruption was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Okay, before I exasperate atheists and religiously minded people alike, I’ll move on. I hope you’ll forgive me for following my bliss as a sincere and curious person of words and modest faith. As they say, take what you like and leave the rest! Why don’t we wrap up.

Meanwhile, my own mind routinely conspires with the cynical world around me to rob right here and now of the magic which is constantly bursting from life’s seams. And this predicament holds true whether I’m writing, editing, or doing pretty much anything else (other than dreaming, which continues to be reliably and thoroughly magical).

My final thought for you today: if you encounter a moment in your writing, editing, or whatever creative pursuit occupies your spirit, during which moment the world seems to grow dim and the light in you falters, then I invite you to close your eyes, take a breath, sit up a bit straighter, and refocus on what is right in front of you.

Really look at this body you have and this space you inhabit. See them once more through the eyes of the stranger you were long ago to yourself and the world, when everything was brand-new. See it the way the child version of you would. They are still inside you, preserving the magic. Give them a chance to unfold their fingers and show you that delightful, reenergizing secret they’ve brought across all this time and distance to give to you right now when you need it most. Then walk hand-in-hand with them back into the magic.

P.S. – Please rest assured that this newsletter will cover craft in detail from time to time. If I seem to go hard on deeper philosophical issues, it is because I feel it’s essential for me and anyone I work with to explore what lies beneath our prosaic creative efforts. But I promise to go hard on practical stuff, too.

P.P.S. - I enjoy genuine connection, so if a thought or question came up for you, hit reply and tell me about it.

P.P.P.S. - If you enjoy this newsletter, pass it along!

Frye, Northrop. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. Harcourt Brace and Company, 1982.

Updike, John. Rabbit, Run. Fawcett Columbine, 1960.