{"id":31914,"date":"2013-07-25T16:46:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T16:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=31914"},"modified":"2014-03-05T03:59:09","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T03:59:09","slug":"dawid1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=31914","title":{"rendered":"A Writer\u2019s Journal, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
\nWe have taken from the defeated
\nWhat they had to leave us\u2014a symbol:
\nA symbol perfected in death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From T.S. Eliot\u2019s \u201cLittle Gidding,\u201d fourth of Four Quartets<\/i><\/p>\n

Ten years ago, wandering the fields of this same valley, but then in<\/i> the Sangres, rather than looking at them from the other side, as I do now \u2013 a crucial distinction \u2013 I read, listened to, memorized, and studied Eliot\u2019s Four Quartets<\/i>, seeking within the long poem a kind of answer. That fall, overseas, I had suffered a crisis of meaning, and the way out of crisis \u2013 either suicide or its alternative, to go on living \u2013 needed explication. For a solid month, I contemplated the former with certainty, but despite a kind of clarity that recommended death, I opted for the latter.<\/p>\n

Once again home in the mountains, I began to read, unable to create anything new, able only to record the words of others in my notebook, needing to find meaning in literature, in something, anything. At 36, I realized I had to part with the atheism that had directed me thus far because it served no longer. Eliot\u2019s poem became my prayer, not because it gave me hope \u2013 though parts of it did \u2013 but because it described the complexity of my particular hopelessness, and proposed a resolution: not a solution, not an exit, but a restoration of the entire picture, of which I was seeing only part. The above stanza continues:<\/p>\n

And all shall be well and
\nAll manner of thing shall be well
\nBy the purification of the motive
\nIn the ground of our beseeching.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What does it mean? And how, you are probably wondering, can I possibly find beauty in a poem written by a misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic imperialist (pig)? I asked myself these questions too. And yet. Four Quartets<\/i>, Eliot\u2019s last poem, talks back to the early poems: some of them hate-filled, some cruel, many \u2013 especially The Wasteland<\/i> (obvious by its title) \u2013 full of despair. Can a human re-invent himself? Is redemption possible?<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

In 2006, beginning the third year on my Jonestown novel, I am closer to seeing the entire picture, not just its most despairing facets \u2013 though I see those too \u2013 and the personal issues of the self \u2013 my self \u2013 have been subsumed by the grander issues of the world.<\/p>\n

When people ask why I am writing about Jonestown, I am tempted to respond that a better question would be, \u201cWhy not<\/i> Jonestown?\u201d Every subject worth writing about, worthy of strenuous effort to understand, finds a home in Jonestown. Love, for instance. Justice. History. Equality. Kindness. Humanity. Violence. Cruelty. Despair. Death. All the \u201cisms\u201d are there: racism, sexism, capitalism, Socialism, post-colonialism, among others. Power hunger. Resistance to power. Solidarity and cliquishness. Greed and selflessness. Altruism and selfishness. Murder and heroism. The love of parents for children and the killing of children by parents. The healing of the sick and a homicidal \u201celixir,\u201d mixed by a doctor and dispensed by nurses.<\/p>\n

Last year I wrote about my reading list, playing with the names of titles that showcased Jonestown in all possible variations. As the third autumn begins, I find my reading list contains fewer and fewer titles featuring \u201cJones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Darkness at Noon<\/i>; Destroying the World to Save it: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism<\/i>; Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre<\/i>; The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus<\/i>; The Gift<\/i>; Gilead<\/i>; The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination; Strategies for Survival: The Psychology of Cultural Resilience in Ethnic Minorities<\/i>; Cities on a Hill<\/i>; American Utopias<\/i>; This Far By Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience<\/i>; Guyanese Boy<\/i>; The Kaywana Trilogy<\/i>; Brave New World<\/i>; We<\/i>; The Possessed.<\/i><\/p>\n

And, over and over, as I climb up and down these hills, The Myth of Sisyphus<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Ten years ago, during my emergence from a self-imposed cocoon of muteness, my alpine valley experienced a windstorm of hurricane proportions. Cowering in the cabin\u2019s loft, hanging onto the dog in desperation, hearing the 100+ mph gusts tearing around the house, smashing branches and downing trees, I wanted to live. Huge aspens abutted the building, and I feared they would smash into me. The phone was dead. The electricity out. I was alone on a mountain with my dog and fearing the very thing \u2013 annihilation \u2013 I had so desired only months before.<\/p>\n

When others ask how I can stand to re-live such a horrendous moment in American history, I say that I can stand it because I am here, in this valley, where I was spared, in the \u201cground of my beseeching.\u201d The morning after that storm a decade ago, the road was littered with telephone poles, whole groves had toppled, cars and homes caved in by the wind\u2019s fury; I was alive. At last I understood there was something more powerful than human will and was glad of it.<\/p>\n

Arthur Koestler\u2019s hero Nicholas Rubashov of Darkness at Noon,<\/i> a Cold War classic, says that suicide is a kind of inverted vanity. While I respect those who died in Guyana on November 18, 1978, I find Koestler\u2019s notion applicable to the Jonestown dead. Rubashov\u2019s opposite number, in the next cell, declares, \u201cHonor is to live and die for one\u2019s belief.\u201d But Rubashov, who will shortly be executed for \u201ccounterrevolutionary acts\u201d by the state he helped to create replies, \u201cHonor is to be useful without vanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Are my motives \u201cpure\u201d as in Eliot\u2019s phrase? I don\u2019t know what purity means. Every day, I read and write, harvesting moments of clarity regarding those who left us in the Guyanese jungle in Jonestown, the ground of their beseeching.<\/p>\n

(Annie Dawid\u2019s story, \u201cKnowing What I Know,\u201d the first chapter of her Jonestown novel, was published in <\/i>Driftwood: A Literary Journal of Voices from Afar in June 2006. After winning a partial scholarship to a workshop for that story, Dawid presented it to the Abroad Writers Conference in Eygalieres, France. She will be a \u201cColorado Voice\u201d for <\/i>The Denver Post starting February, 2007. Her novel, <\/i>Resurrection City, is under consideration at a N.Y. agent and enters the public realm with readings scheduled at colleges and universities in Colorado Springs, Eastern Kentucky, Indianapolis, Portland, OR, Denver, Amherst, MA, a high school in Erie, PA and elsewhere in 2006-7. She may be reached at annie@anniedawid.com<\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate We have taken from the defeated What they had to leave us\u2014a symbol: A symbol perfected in death. From T.S. Eliot\u2019s \u201cLittle Gidding,\u201d fourth of Four Quartets Ten years ago, wandering the fields of this same valley, but then in the Sangres, rather than looking at them from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":31961,"menu_order":15,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-31914","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31914"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57183,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31914\/revisions\/57183"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}