Writers notes: Oh, the darlings I killed!
Some bits I had to leave out of the Leviathan.
The Book Serialisation is an alive thing. And as I write it, the metacrisis complexifies in real time. I use these Writers Notes posts to alert you to snippets that I may add back into the book, to keep things as current as possible (these bits will be included in the digital book that I’ll send out shortly). However, some are really just interesting “darling” factlets or reflections that I had to leave on the cutting room floor, to mix some publishing euphemisms.
Regarding the unfolding oligarchy in the US. I will write separately on this in the coming days/weeks. The topic is too large and fast-moving to include here.
Some of these are musings, some are thought starters from you.
And below is a sweet video I took on Sunday sitting in a corner at the daggy cafe down the road. I landed in an adrenally spent funk post-finishing the book. I was feeling so bereft of life-force (I struggled to walk until today). Per what I wrote in the last chapter of my book, I forced myself to get out of the house and simply be amid humanity…and then to observe and marvel as the beauty comes to greet me. I was doing my “writing to myself” technique on a scrap of paper (I’ll share some ideas that came from this in upcoming post) and looked up to see all these Dads being with their kids. At one table father and son played UNO while they waited for their meals. Another duo read the newspaper together. At another table the kid coloured in while Dad read a book. I’m aware of the trap of applauding men “performing the act of parenting their own kids”. In this case, however, I was struck by the simple non-performative companionship.
Some ideas I came across, or thought about…most of which I won’t include in the book (slaughtered darlings!):
Metaphorically, we have given ourselves the task of replacing the tires on the car while racing down the freeway.
This was something I heard Daniel Schmachtenberger talk about: We have inherited the paradigms of empires that became obsessed with growth. These were the empires that necessarily built armies that conquered and then passed on the growth mindset. There have been other worldviews…but they never got to fill the history books.