Everything Askance
Life looked straight in the eye was insupportable, as everyone knew by instinct.
The great trick... is to avoid looking it straight in the eye.
Everything askance and it all shines on.
– Thomas McGuane, Ninety-Two in the Shade
After forty years of silence and exile, Goldmund has had enough, and rises up to whack Narcissus over the head with a rusty lanza, declaring it's time to keep true to thy dreams of youth and dig deep for a little cunning.
"Better late than never," offers a voice from the abyss, sounding as deep and wide as Ignatius J. Reilly.
"Wait, what?" I said, turning to see the triste figura looking back at me in the mirror. "Holy crap. Time flies. "¿Quién coño me ha robado el mes de abril?"
"What is a man but a little soul holding up a corpse?" says Malcolm Lowry.
"Very subtle. Okay. Point taken. Maybe I should—"
"Let the weak and wavering attempt it not!" warns London.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I said. "Weak and wavering? Okay. I'm no spring chicken, but a third act is—"
"Nunca hubo una muerte tan anunciada," says el Maestro, matter-of-factly.
"Ouch. Jeez, Gabo, that was a little rough. And for the record, I'm fit as a fiddle."
"Surely everyone realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen," says Henry Miller, piling on.
"Uhh, listen, Hank, there's no looking back. Okay? And wasn't it Vonnegut who said, 'The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.'?"
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives," chides Annie Dillard.
"Umm, sure," I muttered, thinking, taut-OLL-O-Geee... But, who am I to argue with Annie Dillard about time?
"Life begins on the other side of despair," said Sartre.
"Now that is just dark, JP. I'm not even sure where that fits in here, but, ENOUGH! Mario Vargas Llosa gave me some good advice once: 'Nunca te dejes pisotear por nadie.' So everybody just BACK OFF."
[Crickets]
"That's better," I said, taking a deep breath. "Okay, now, hypothetically ... this 'Substack' you speak of. What exactly would I—"
"Moralize!" grumbles Vonnegut.
"I'm pretty sure that people hate that," I said. "Especially people who read." But he wasn't finished. And I smelled a caveat.
"I would add this caveat: "
Bingo!
"Be sure to sound reader-friendly and not all that serious when doing it. Don Quixote... comes to mind. The sermons of Cotton Mather do not."
"Okay. Now THAT makes sense to me, but how do I—"
"You've got to get obsessed...," says John Irving, by way of Coach Bob.
"Oh, no. Please don't. That one goes way back. Very personal. You'll jinx the whole thing."
"... and stay obsessed."
"Please?"
"You have to keep passing—"
"Okay. Okay. Fine. I'll do it."
And at the end of a long journey, without knowing myself the course which I had taken, I found myself... in that tragicomic region of La Mancha where I expect to stay.
– Graham Greene, Ways of Escape
Everything Askance is what happens when a modern-day Alonso Quijano lets go of the hunt and decides instead to build something beautiful, ridiculous, and true.
It's a cathedral—disguised as a rickety windmill—built from unfinished dreams and overdue dispatches. Literary reflections, memoir fragments, scientific quests, technological treks, and road-tested sideways wisdom on how to live in the world.
A slow-burning quest grounded in decades of reading, rash curiosity, folly, and lived contradiction. Essays, book notes, and spiritual stand-up—anchored in story, guided by literature and science, and tilted just a little off-center.
There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.
– James Salter
Seeing, then, that in fact he could not move, he took refuge in his usual remedy, which was to think about some situation from his books, and his madness made him recall...
– Miguel Cervantes
Regular Features
HTLITW — How To Live In The World
Literary reflections anchored by collected wisdom, drawn from decades of relentless reading. Essays built around quotes from the literary map of my life.
Panama Memoir Fragments
Stories from a transformative chapter. My personal version of separation, initiation, and return—better late than never. These serve both as standalone narratives and glimpses of a larger memoir-in-progress.
Dispatches
Sideways observations on creativity, culture, aging, parenting, and modern life. Reports on the world from a point of view just slightly askance.
Field Notes
A cross-disciplinary dabbler's explorations in science of the sort seekers tend to read: neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, mindfulness, consciousness, physics—anything tangentially related to the mysterious black box from within which I build the world. All expressed with wonder and curiosity rather than expertise.
Technology Treks
Inquiries at the intersection of humans and machines, written with both technical fluency and literary sensibility. Not for hype. For insight. Showing, not telling.
If you find much of human behavior inscrutable, but particularly your own...
If you could imagine yourself selling acres of arable land in order to buy books...
If you've ever built something in the garage instead of finishing your taxes...
If you suspect that a comic approach to life might be the most reasonable one...
—and that autocracies thrive on humorlessness—
then you might feel at home here.
Nothing endures, of course. Days and nights fly past, fly past...
But kindness, compassion, and good sentences can go a long way.
Sources & Spirits
"Life looked straight in the eye..." — Thomas McGuane, Ninety-Two in the Shade
"¿Quién coño me ha robado el mes de abril?" — Joaquín Sabina
"What is a man but a little soul holding up a corpse?" — Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
"Let the weak and weary attempt it not." — Jack London, No Mentor but Myself
"Nunca hubo una muerte tan anunciada." — Gabriel García Márquez, Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada
"... capable of living a far better life..." — Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
"The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains..." — Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday
"How we spend our days..." — Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
"Life begins on the other side of despair." — Jean-Paul Sartre
"Nunca te dejes pisotear por nadie." — Mario Vargas Llosa, El Héroe Discreto
"Moralize. ... Be sure to sound reader-friendly..." — Kurt Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death
"You have to get obsessed..." — John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
"...that tragicomic region of La Mancha..." — Graham Greene, Ways of Escape
"There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream..." — James Salter
"Days and nights fly past, fly past..." — Paraphrase of monastic reflections, Thai Forest tradition
"Seeing, then, that ..." — Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Edith Grossman
Shadowy debts and spiritual echoes: Joyce, Hesse, Schiller, John Kennedy Toole, and Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote.