I try to write ahead, past when I'm dead, because I might be read, and my spirit might be fed. I believe in an afterlife in this sense, and you'll never prove me wrong. I'll be dead. With that in mind, I try to write for the future and read from the past. I make no few accommodations for the present, which I think is trash.

To be on the right side of the present guarantees you a place on the wrong side of history; there is no great mystery to this. To triangulate a position between current hypocrisies is to guarantee the derision of the future, and is a grave omission of the past. Both your ancestors and descendants would be aghast. If I'm ever reborn via page reloads, I hope to be wearing clean underclothes, morally so. Taking a compromised position offers no prizes in the future, besides dying of shame again and again in public. A coward dies many times after his own death as well.

Sometimes I read the past and think, look how prescient, look how ahead of even our times and sometimes I think, what a dumbass. This is as meaningless as someone pissing or putting flowers on your grave, but I take it as a matter of greatest importance. When I am immune to all judgment, how will I be judged? By my creator, certainly, but by my haters as well. Will I be able to say I told you so, or will I be judged the worst of all curses, a man of his times, when everything's already gone to hell?

A man of his times, when the times are war crimes and lies, is a man to be cursed along with them. I think of this judgement more than the petty crowd, though I won't be around to receive it. I write for posterity to cover my posterior, though I can see neither, really. As I both worship the dead and fear for my own head, I try to write for a future audience I'll never meet. Because they might meet me, and on that off-chance, I don't want to embarrass myself in public. I had this thought when we climbed a mountain not even near some rural village and we were hanging by our fingertips before the end. It was not so much the thought of dying as my mother having to explain how her idiot son died that made me turn back. I don't have much of a reputation to speak of, but I think about it constantly.

The Immortality Of Writers

Everyone has an afterlife, you're just not there for it. The world goes on before and after, in fact, most of the time you're dead, or unalive as the kids say. Writers and artists can live for the longest time of all, in the most dim, useless way that only a writer or artist would care about and which rarely feeds their children. The first thing a writer writes is their name, and this can be remembered for ages, both for sages or petty cuneiform rages. Unless, of course, you're an ancient scribe who writes one of the most remembered poems, and forgets to write their own name. The Immortality Of Writers (-1100ish) is one of my favorite poems, and we don't know who wrote it. The ‘Egyptian’ poet gives shout-outs to Imhotep, Ptahhotep, and Kaires, but neglected to ‘tag’ himself, a shame. As Anonymous still tells all of us,

Those sages who foretold the future,
What came from their mouth occurred:
It is found as (their) pronouncement,
It is written in their books.
The children of others are given to them
To be heirs as their own children.
They hid their magic from the masses
It is read in their Instructions.
Death made their names forgotten
Rut books made them remembered!

This ancient ‘Egyptian’ was certainly cooking. He's a man after my own heart, though I've barely published a book. You can put your heart in a sarcophagus, or write your heart out on the sarcophagus. The former is chopped liver while the other lives on whenever someone just breathes the words. Many kings have paid for eternal glory, but some writers just took it. As the poet continues,

Man decays, his corpse is dust,
All his kin have perished;
But a book makes him remembered
Through the mouth of its reciter.
Better is a book than a well-built house
Than tomb-chapels in the west;
Better than a solid mansion
Than a stela in the temple!

As Marlon Brando said in A Streetcar Named Desire, “Stellaaaaa!” The futility of what we love, lose, and what passes for news is lost in time. Like tears in the rain, re: Blade Runner. All that's left of ‘me’ is the tears we leave on media, like stains. Who knows what will be remembered, and how, and when? This is all beyond the writer's ken. Who knows what lurks in the hearts of men, least of all future men? All you can do is write, and write again, and pretend you know anything. You can tell all you want, but time will tell.

The best chance for a writer to live on, like any of us, is to reproduce a lot. This means for your ‘books’ to be copied, or for your person to be given tombs or stelas to write on. But even this is just a chance, a literal shot in the dark. Who knows what will actually be preserved? It could be random. One of the oldest written works is from a merchant, Nanni, complaining that Ea-nasir sells low-quality copper. He said, “You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: ‘If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!’ What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt?” Did he plan for this Yelp to be still audible, 3725 years later? No, but somehow his name is better known than the kings of the time. Who knows what will survive, and why? All you can do is try.

In that sense (among others) I believe in an afterlife. If I'm wrong, I'll never find out, so no lie. One's name can live on, or one's deeds, or simply the detritus one leaves behind. None of this can raise the dead, but it can unerase them, making a palimpsest of the past when you breathe life into old lines. You can't literally live again, but you can literally live again, if you know what I mean. In that sense the judgement of the day can help, but things are not necessarily what they seem. Indeed, what might make you the most relevant today may make you the most risible posthumously. It's like the Stink Tree of Zhuangzi.

The Stink Tree

As Carpenter Shi said, passing this tree, “This is worthless lumber! As a ship it would soon sink, as a coffin it would soon rot, as a tool it would soon break, as a door it would leak sap, as a pillar it would bring infestation. This is a talentless, worthless tree. It is precisely because it is so useless that it has lived so long.”

Later the tree came to the carpenter in a dream and said, “What do you want to compare me to, one of those cultivated trees? … They batter themselves with the vulgar conventions of the world— and all other creatures do the same. As for me, I’ve been working on being useless for a long time. It almost killed me, but I’ve finally managed it—and it is of great use to me! If I were useful, do you think I could have grown to be so great?”

I think of this whenever I feel useless. Useless for what? Useless for when? Zhuangzi cultivated uselessness and considered it a value over sagaciousness, really. The cultural revolutionary Master Zhuang said, “Only when sagacity is destroyed and wisdom abandoned will the great robbers disappear. Smash the jades and crush the pearls, and the small robbers will not arise. Burn the tallies and shred the seals, and the people will become plain and straight. Break the measures and split the scales, and the people will no longer bicker and fight. Only when we decimate the sagely laws throughout the world will the people be able to listen to reason.”

This was crazy talk both then and now, and Zhuangzi is constantly debated within his own work. As Huizi (Zhuangzi's foil) said, “Your words are similarly big but useless, which is why they are rejected by everyone who hears them.” To which Master Zhuang replied, “You have this big tree, and you worry that it’s useless. Why not plant it in our homeland of not-even-anything, the vast wilds of open nowhere? Then you could loaf and wander there, doing lots of nothing there at its side, and take yourself a nap, far-flung and unfettered, there beneath it. It will never be cut down by ax or saw. Nothing will harm it. Since it has nothing for which it can be used, what could entrap or afflict it?”

I feel this way sometimes, in my monetary mediocrity and scholarly obscurity. I've been writing online for nearly 25 years, rarely got beyond maybe 1,000 readers at a time, and never made a reasonable living at it. But I'm still here, writing line after line, like the rings of a tree that nobody reads until it dies. Is this useless? Yes, one hopes so, like the Stink Tree of Zhuangzi's time. I have been lucky not to be cut down in my prime, entrapped into corporate journalism, afflicted by conventional publishers, or even employed as a writer beyond guerrilla papers that got their editors killed or exiled (shout-out Sunday Leader). I remain uncorrupted in what I write, not through great character, but simply for lack of opportunity. I never sold out because nobody's buying. As Zhuangzi also said, “Cows with white spots, pigs with upturned snouts, and humans with hemorrhoids are considered unfit to be offered as sacrifices to the river god. All shamans know this, and thus they regard these as creatures of bad fortune. But this is exactly why the Spirit Man regards them as creatures of very good fortune indeed!” Like a human with hemorrhoids, that's the luck of a my writing career, in a line.

Today, as a tree that most people pass by, I have the luxury of growing at my own pace, writing rings in my own time. Like leaves rustling in the wind, nobody cares, nobody minds, unless they want to stop for a while, and hear them chime. Such is the good fortune of uselessness and the success of failure. This is my treasure, all the more valuable because it's yet to be measured. Who knows if I'll be read in the future? Least of all me, but it's a wonderful thing to believe, and I can't be proven otherwise, so let it be. Like any belief in an afterlife, you can't be wrong, unless you end up in another afterlife, awkwardly. If there's no afterlife at all, then you're none the wiser. Like talking trees and immortality, it's all imaginary, but it's all imaginary innit?, as the Buddha says. And God knows, belief in an afterlife can make you a better person today.

That's how I try to write, with a fear of God and a fear of my own humiliation, and a destination that's both 100 years ahead and 10,000 years behind me. Machiavelli, in exile, spoke of what I call friends in history and I'd like to join them someday. He said, “I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them.” This, to me, describes the blogging experience for me. For these four hours (about right) I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, and I am not frightened by death. Indeed, I look forward to it, and write accordingly.