Author: Josh Philip Ross

Almost half way!

It’s Pepero Day, that joyous festival when Koreans buy imitation Pocky Sticks for each other because 11/11 looks like a bunch of sticks, and also because Lotte, the maker of Pepero, hypes it. So enjoy your fake Korean holiday!

The latest issue of The New Yorker has a poem in it that says beautifully something that I have thought for a long time but never quite had the words for. Unfortunately, the poem isn’t posted online, but here it is:

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. the poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

– Jack Gilbert

I’m still ahead of schedule, still cranking along, although by now I’m pretty sure that this won’t be finished at 50,000 words. As it is, I’ve spent a good 20 pages just getting my character from Goa to Pushkar by train, bus, rickshaw and donkey cart. God forbid he ever actually does anything interesting.

I’m doing well, still ahead of schedule, having written a bit this weekend.

Topic: Personal

As usual, Get Your War On is right on:

For those of you who are considering fleeing the U.S. to avoid another four years of life in Roveistan, Harper’s has a not very helpful guide to changing your citizenship, which suggests that moving permanently to another country is only slightly harder and will take only slightly longer than getting a Democrat elected president (Edwards ’08! Obama ’16! Chelsea ’24!).

If you’re seriously thinking about heading out of town, though, you’d be better off at Dave’s ESL Cafe, where you can find jobs teaching English in Ethiopia, China, Japan, Bali, Kuwait and especially Korea. Oh, so many jobs in Korea!

This is the first time that an election result has actually left me physically injured. I woke up Wednesday morning with a horrific pain in my neck and left shoulder. By evening I had some visible swelling and my left side was obviously drooping when I looked at myself in the mirror (and not just because my apartment is a little slanty). I hadn’t done any heavy lifting, so I can only assume I was wounded by some combination of jaw-clenching stress and sleeping funny.It’s a bit better today, though. I’ll get better. We’ll get better. Last night I got an email from Moveon.org, which they have up on their website, and it made me feel hopeful.

This last election was obviously a dreadful failure for Democrats and liberals, but there were also some important developments that could be the seeds of a more successful future. Let’s make this our Goldwater ’64: a defeat in the present that revitalizes our side of the political spectrum and lays the groundwork for a generation of victories ahead. Fuck it: no more triangulation, no more DLC Liebermanesque Republicanism lite. We move right, they move further right and kick our asses. We need to go back to what the left has always been about: fairness, justice, and living up to our personal and collective responsibilities. And we need to fight hard.

I know, this is less a strategy than just an exhortation to come up with a strategy. But this country has drifted right for thirty years — we’re now well to the right of Nixon and Eisenhower on many issues — and it’s time to push it back the other way. I don’t know how, but we have to.