David’s posterous

One of the most popular dictums prescribed to fiction writers is to "show, not tell."  Since I first read this advice, it has confused me.  How can you show a story?  Surely a story a told.

I believe in writing concisely.  Writers should say exactly what they mean in precise words and sentences.  Words are precious. 

The prescription "show, don't tell" I believed was encouraging me to waste words.  Why write, "She put one foot in front of the other, gathering pace, until she was moving at speed," when, "She ran," suffices?

For months I agonised over how to show a story.  Eventually, I gave up.  It was only when I assumed the voice of a storyteller that I found I could write fiction.

Yet a lingering doubt nagged at me.  What if, by writing stories in the voice of a storyteller, I was conning myself into believing I could write fiction?  Fiction writers, after all, show rather than tell.

Donna Baker helped me begin to unlock this mystery. 

"Most writers fall into one or two categories," Baker writes.  "They are either show writers or tell writers.  It doesn't really matter which you are, because it's all part of having your own voice."

However, she adds: "Tell writers are often better at non-fiction and may give up on writing a novel."

Thus again I began to doubt my status as a fiction writer.

Only by reading John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist did I finally find the confidence to believe that I can be a tell writer and a fiction writer.

According to Gardner, what makes a good writer is not the ability to show rather than tell, but rather "a truly accurate eye".

The writer with this accurate eye "can tell his story in concrete terms, not just feeble abstractions.  Instead of writing, 'She felt terrible,' he can show - by the precise gesture or look or by capturing the character's exact turn of phrase - subtle nuances of the character's feeling.  One can feel sad or happy or bored or cross in a thousand ways: the abstract adjective says almost nothing. The precise gesture nails down the one feeling right for the moment.  This is what is meant when writing teachers say that one should 'show,' not 'tell.' And this, it should be added, is all the writing teacher means.  Good writers may 'tell' about almost anything in fiction except the characters' feelings."

“A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew.

“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge's nephew. “You don't mean that I am sure.”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry?”
~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Let's define humbug:

Humbug: a hard, boiled, peppermint sweet or lolly with decorative stripes

Humbug: a hoax, imposition, fraud, or sham (1751); used interjectionally to mean "stuff and nonsense" (1825); to deceive or cheat.

Humbug the First

Take Christmas shopping, for example. Says James Carrier:

“Christmas shopping [is] an onerous task. People regale each other with stories about how hard it is and they resolve to start earlier next year."

“Stores put up their decorations earlier and earlier, the advertising, the Christmas sales, and the need to buy more and more drown out the familial values that were supposed to exist in the Christmasses of our youth and before. The materialistic, commercial air of Christmas conflicts with important religious values bearing on the birth of Christ.”

Humbug the Second

Now for something a little more complex.

What if the hoax is not that Christmas has lot its religious values, but that it has become religious in the extreme? That, in truth, Christmas is the embodiment of our true religion. For this argument, we call on Richard Horsley:

“Because Christmas has become so central to the Western economy and Western consumption is so central to global capitalism, this festival of “Holy Days” has become a central expression and embodiment of Western imperial domination, an imperial religion. People in the West consume the vast majority of world resources and Christmas provides not only a dramatic spike in the retailing that dominates the Western economies, but is also a powerful motivation to the whole enterprise of consumption of goods quite apart from human needs. The god we are really serving in the celebration of Christmas is global capital.”

Humbug the Third

All good things come in threes, so a final argument to conclude with.

What if we are deceiving ourselves with our complaints about the commercialism of Christmas? This is not the simple paradox that we complain about the commercialism of Christmas, but we end up buying stuff anyway. Rather, it is an attempt to get to the core of the paradox. Thus the question: What if it is our complaints about the commercialism of Christmas are precisely what sustain and inspire our yearly shopping frenzy?

This argument requires a parable. And who better to tell one, but Northern Irish parable writer, Peter Rollins. Rollins tells the story of an international banker who takes comfort from his Christian faith, which stops him “from getting too caught up in [the] heartless world of work”. One day, by miraculous intervention, the banker loses his faith.

“Now that he no longer had any religious beliefs to make him question his work and hold it lightly, he was no longer able to continue with it. Faced with the fact that he was now just a hard-nosed businessman working in a corrupt system, he […] gave up his line of work completely, gave the money he had accumulated to the poor, and started using his considerable expertise in helping a local charity.”

The god of global capital is omnipresent. Complaints about his power only strengthen the bars of the jail in which he holds us prisoner.

Can we escape?

Scrooge's escape from his miserlyness, from his addiction through money, came through confronting himself, repentance, and laughter.

“Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long, line of brilliant laughs!”
~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Concluding Remarks

Humbugs of the first definition – the hard, boiled, peppermint sweets with decorative stripes – take time to swallow. They are sweets that need to be dwelt on to be enjoyed to their full potential.

So too, perhaps, with humbugs of the second variety.

If you have ever sat before your piano to set loose the dark melodies that haunt the dungeons of your inner life, you will know the magic consumes your fingers. The music seizes your mind, surges through your torso, and your fingers dance. 

Such is the magic consuming Susan's fingers as you watch her now, sitting before her mahogany piano.  Her fingers dance to a mournful dirge, to a lullaby of grief, of barren, wasted years.

Listen carefully. Devote your ear to this melody, for woven into its minor harmonics are the stories of a broken life.  Listen carefully, for this is the first dance of Susan's fingers in two decades. The music whispers the secrets of Susan's silent tears.

The melody flows from these tears, these transient gem-stones forged in the recesses of Susan's being.  It flows from this small room's pale pink wallpaper, patterned with carousel horses and circus clowns. It flows from the empty white crib behind her, the room's centrepiece.

The cradle is empty but for a small, fraying teddy bear.  The bear's fur is worn down to patches, its plastic eyes dull and lifeless.

The melody flows from this teddy bear too, and if you asked Susan why she is weeping, why this room is empty and decorated with circus clowns and carousel horses, why she has given over her fingers to the voices of grief, she would turn her eyes to this teddy, this nameless teddy.

There is healing in the setting free of demons, healing in the sound of mournful lullaby.  Such healing that were you to take the teddy bear, and hold it before Susan with a look of compassionate wonder in your eyes, she would turn from the piano, dry her tears with a paper tissue, and tell you a story of which even her husband knows only fragments.

They'd chosen to live in this house because it was small, she'd say, much smaller than their previous home.  There'd be no empty bedrooms. Only a study for her husband, and a music room for her piano. Nothing to remind her of the empty womb.

Susan found the teddy bear the day they'd moved in. She'd found it in this room, her music room. In the room had been an old, dusty wardrobe. The removal men said they'd take it away.  They'd lifted it out, Susan watching, then laughed at the squashed teddy bear that dropped from behind it.  "Throw it out for us, love," they'd said.

She'd followed them outside, watching them load the wardrobe into their van.  When they'd pulled away, she ran back to the room, looking at the the teddy. It was lying on its side, curled up like a foetus.

It was only a small bear, the size of Susan's palm. Its fur was worn and fraying.  Maybe a child lived here once, Susan thought. Maybe this was a child's room.

Susan knew, then. The teddy was a sign. She stood on holy ground. She'd taken off shoes and knelt before the bear, picking it up and pressing it to her face.

She'd get the room ready now, she'd decided. Pink wallpaper, it would be a girl, and a white crib.

She'd leave the piano in here, wouldn't play it until the baby came.  Such was her fervour, such her belief in this sign, such her commitment.  She'd sacrifice her dreams, her talents until the prophecy came to pass.

"Thank you, God," she'd whispered, clutching the bear to her lips. "Thank you, God."  Its cotton skin was soft, stinking of child's bed.

To comment, please visit the version of this story at Truant Pen.

Mohammed was a warlord.

Abraham was an attempted child murderer.

Moses was a war criminal.

And Jesus was a convicted blasphemer, complementary medicine practitioner and socialist.

About a year ago I met a freegan.  I found him in a online forum of British dumpster divers.  I'd asked for help learning to dumpster dive, and he was visiting Manchester, so we arranged to meet up.  He was suspicious in case I was an undercover journalist or a police officer, so I knew him only as M.

We met at 11am, outside a train station.  He was wearing quirky-yet-stylish glasses and a smart lime-green raincoat. On his back was a large rucksack holding all his worldly possessions, including a laptop.  He told me he felt a bit bourgeois for owning a laptop.  Recently, he'd become a born again Christian.

First we went to the bins behind a Co-op.  M told me he'd show me the bins, but I'd be the one foraging through them.  He was the best kind of teacher, one who forces you to do things yourself.  I was terrified, but I opened the bin.  I didn't have to forage far. Almost instantly, I found a bunch of bananas and a pack of Nestle Munch Bunch yoghurts.  Usually, I boycott Nestle products.  But these were Nestle products going to landfill.  I snaffled the bananas and yoghurts into my backpack.

Bananas are the staple of a freegan's diet.  Because of our obsession with pristine fruit, and to keep their profits high, supermarkets throw away millions of tonnes of bananas every year.  M's conversion to freeganism started with bananas.  Recently homeless, and searching some skips for food, he found a skip full of bananas.  This was not a household-size skip that you see on the roadside outside the homes of people having an extension built.  This was a whopping industrial skip, like the ones at your local council's rubbish dump.  Full to the brim with crates and crates of ripe bananas, thrown out by a supermarket.

Next, M took me to a Tesco.  We were lucky at this Tesco: the bin was neither locked nor covered by CCTV cameras.  It's rare to find a Tesco bin with such lax security.  The bin was, however, in a busy car park.  As I opened the bin and dove down inside, some nearby shoppers shouted and jeered abuse.  At the bottom of the bin was a dustbin sack full with pastries.  I quickly grabbed two croissants and some cinnamon swirls - I wasn't bold enough to spend time taking more.  This was shocking.  One bin, at one small city supermarket.  At least 50 pastries - still fresh and perfectly edible - being sent to landfill.  

I had struck two bins at small supermarkets on a random morning.  Both were brimming with food.

Why so much waste?  With billions of people starving in the world, and a looming global famine, why so much waste? According to the UK Freegans, there are a range of reasons:

• The packaging has been damaged or soiled.
• The food is part of a case which has had one or two items damaged or soiled
• The food is nearing (or has passed) the sell-by or use-by dates. Often products are thrown out when the sell-by date expires, which means that perfectly edible/usable products that have not reached their use-by date are being wasted.
• The food did not sell quickly enough before a fresh shipment arrived.
• Seasonal-specific branding (e.g Christmas wrapping; Easter eggs etc.).
• On a similar note, if a product line is withdrawn, or the branding is evolved to incorporate a new 'image', or new marketing strategy, this may be another reason that perfectly usable items are thrown out. New or experimental product lines that fail to sell are discarded in this way.
• Competitions on the packaging..
• Supermarkets weigh up their decision-making, not on 'best use of resources' but using economic criteria. They often believe that the amount of money it would cost them to recycle is not economical.

UK Freegans conclude: "The main reason items are thrown out is due to selfishness, greed and short-term thinking, which leads to the irrational nature underlying many, if not all, of the reasons cited above."

M saw no contradiction between his lifestyle as a freegan and his Christian faith.  I did not ask him in depth how he connected the two aspects of his life, but I have thought about it often since then.

In biblical times, all poor people were freegans. Widows who no longer had a husband to provide for them - this was a patriarchal society - took surplus food from farmers' fields for free.  Likewise the fatherless, and refugees and immigrants.  In the Bible we read of Ruth, a Moabite immigrant who arrived in ancient Israel at the time of the barley harvest.  To survive, she followed the barley reapers, gleaning the grain they'd missed.

Didn't they shout at her?  Didn't they call her names? Wasn't there a locked gate on the barleyfield, or CCTV to catch her in her crime?

No.  The owner of the barley field came and blessed Ruth as she worked.  "The Lord be with you," he said, as Anglican priests say today to their congregations.  Ruth ends up marrying this man, Boaz.  Imagine that today as a newspaper headline: "Sainsbury's Local store manager marries immigrant caught stealing food from store bin".

How could such a thing happen?  It happened because Jewish law demanded it. On their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, Moses told the Israelites: "When you reap your harvest in your field, and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the immigrant, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord may bless you in all the work of your hands."  No wonder Boaz blessed her. By taking the waste from his field, Ruth was bringing to him the Lord's blessing on all his work.

Here is a word for supermarket managers.  If, instead of hiding your waste food in locked bins, you use it to throw a party in the streets for the homeless, the refugees, and the fatherless, God will bless you.

But more than that, it is a word for all of us. 

It is a word for those of us who claim it is 'our country' and how dare any immigrants come along and have a share of the pie we have baked? If you are to have any pie at all, God replies, remember that the pie is actually mine, and make sure you give a good share to the immigrants.  Some social commentators give God's answer to the pie question differently but equally poignantly.  Who would do the menial and messy jobs, the toilet cleaning, the street sweeping, the shoe shining, if the immigrants did not?  How would our economy work at all if it wasn't for humble people who by circumstance have been forced into the jobs that by some grotesque twist of the collective imagination, we have come to see as below us?

It is a word for those of us who work hard for every penny we earn and are outraged at the charity huggers in the city streets with their clipboards asking us to share our money with the outcasts and marginalised of our society.

It is a word, too, for those of us who believe we have a right to own a laptop, and a TV, to live in heated homes with clean running water, rather than recognizing that these are bourgeoisie privileges, granted to only a small minority of the people who live in this world.

For Christian believers, the word is yet more still.  The Word, we are told, came and dwelt among us.  And because the Word came and dwelt among us, we were able to see a deeper truth.   We came to know that it is we, the followers of the Word, who are strangers and aliens, sojourners and pilgrims.  We Christians are all immigrants in this world, and we are called to live as such.

This means, firstly, we are all like Ruth and M. We are all freegans.  Our lives and everything that we have in the world we live are gifts to us, given freely by God.  We are called not to be greedy with these gifts, but to ensure that all people are given an adequate and fair share, even those last to arrive to glean at the barley field.

Secondly, that our true citizenship is in the kingdom of heaven. As ambassadors of Christ, we are called to bring the reality of this kingdom, of our true home, of justice, peace, and joy for all people, as much as possible into the world in which we live.

Thirdly, we are to choose humility. We are to take the jobs that the world, through some groteque twist of the collective imagination, sees as menial and messy: washing feet, hospitality to the homeless, embracing the people we view as dirty and unclean with a hug, a smile, a healing touch, and a listening ear.

M was right, I think, to see no contradiction between his freeganism and his Christianity. In fact, I think freegans are a lot like Christians.  "Freeganism is about climbing out of the socio-economic system and living with a new motivation," the UK freegans explain.  Or, as St. Paul puts it, "If anyone is in Christ, he, or she, is a new creation; old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new", and elsewhere, "do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind".

In the book of Acts, we read how the very first church members shared "all things in common".  There wasn't "anyone among them who lacked" because they distributed their possessions "as anyone had need" .

And the freegans?  "Rather than working for money, as in the current system, freegans occupy their time giving and receiving for free."

Bible Passages Used: Ruth 1-2, Deuteronomy 24:19, 1 Peter 2:11, Philippians 3:20, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 2:12, Acts 4:32-35

This makes me wonder: Given that none of us feel quite grown up, why
do we struggle so much to be childlike?

Yesterday morning I walked up the end of our lane to an intersection where Manchester's major artery roads link together. The M60, the M56 and the A5103 (Princess Parkway) all are close by, as well as a more ancient transport route, the river Mersey.

These roads are noisy, smelly, and polluting.  Yet along the edges - for anyone looking closely - there is untold beauty.  Thousands of cars drive past this every single day, never giving it a second thought, if it is noticed at all.

I love the Ubuntu Linux operating system. I love the philosophy behind it, the community that sustains it, and the way most things work so beautifully out of the box. I am an Ubuntu convert, and would never consider going back to Windows.

However, there are three fundamental problems with Ubuntu that make me reluctant to recommend it to friends. These problems are central to the everyday user experience of almost all computer users, and until they are solved, I can't see Ubuntu entering the mainstream.

I'm aware that the blame for these problems usually lies with hardware manufacturers rather than Ubuntu developers. Nonetheless, I think Ubuntu developers should engage in serious and sustained dialogue with manufactures about resolving these issues.

The problems are these:

1. Printing. I have an Epson printer. With much ado and fuss, it will print documents from Ubuntu. However, whenever it is used in Ubuntu, the ink will run out after 10-20 pages. So not only is printing in Ubuntu a hassle that usually involves restarting the printer multiple times, it's also very expensive. When I need to replace ink, there is no utility in Ubuntu to tell me which colour ink cartridge has run out and needs replacing. So I have to load up Windows to find out.

2. Wi-fi and Stand-by mode. After Ubuntu goes into standby or hibernation, it will not connect to Wi-Fi. I understand that this is a common problem with Linux, and not unique to Ubuntu distributions. This is extremely frustrating, and means I waste a lot of energy because when I leave my computer for an hour, I can only turn off the display. Everything else must be left running, or I will have to restart my computer when I return to it, losing everything that I'm working on.

I see this as the biggest problem facing Linux today. Computers are responsible for as many emissions as airplanes. Ubuntu has an ethical stance, and should be taking the lead on reducing emissions. Until Linux puts together a viable standby mode that does not disable WiFi, I will remain highly reluctant to recommend it to anyone.

3. Display. This is a smaller issue, but still a key problem. My computer is less than one year old, yet its graphics card is incompatible with Ubuntu. Even with the hardware drivers installed, I can't get visual effects to work. Installing the graphics card driver actually slows down and ruins the basic graphics rather than helping. Although this is less fundamental than standby mode, as it's still possible to use a computer without visual effects, it's disappointing only to have a basic experience on advanced hardware.

What are your thoughts and experiences of using Ubuntu and other Linux distributions?

The energy the world currently gets from fossil fuels is equivalent to having 22 billion slaves working for us.  That's around three slaves for every person on earth, without taking into account that the Western world uses a hugely disproportionate share of the earth's resources, whilst many people in the developing world have no access to fossil fuel energy.

It is often claimed that the world is more 'civilised' than it has ever been. Yet this civilisation - the proliferation of leisure time, urbanisation, nation-states, the arts, and service industries, is built on the exploitation of energy that took millions of years to develop beneath the earth's crust.  It has taken us less than 300 years to use the majority of this energy.  Our 'civilisation', as we proudly call it, has been built upon making our mother earth into our slave.

Thinking back into the past, many so-called 'civilisations' were built on the energy of slaves.  The Greek civilisation endorsed slavery as a necessary part of household life, as did the Roman Empire.  The pyramids of the Ancient Egyptians were built by slaves. 

Even the prosperity of America, now reliant upon fossil fuels, was initially built on the backs of African slaves.  The British Empire also relied on this slave trade for its riches.

As fossil fuels start to run out, the world will rapidly change.  Much of the energy we use is poured into food production.  As oil, coal, and gas disappear, a greater and greater number of people will have to work the land, bringing back to it real fertility rather than the cancerous, excessive growth of death made possible by herbicides, pesticides, and chemical 'fertiliser'.

Can any society built upon slavery call itself a civilisation?  Or is slavery always an inherent part of civilised life?

Lately I have felt apathetic.  What can I do to make the world a better place?  There are so many problems in the world, and so little that one person can do about them.

I was inspired today by this glass design.  It shook me into believing that I can make a difference.  Glass designer Inna Alesina writes:

The user [has] to be careful while filling the glass to cover the hole with his/her thumb whilst drinking thus one could put a stop to waste (in the global sense) with one's own hands.

I can take action by putting my finger over the hole in the glass, as Alesina suggests.  I can choose to live according to my needs rather than according to my wants.  And I can choose to continually re-evaluate my needs to make sure they are not disguised wants.

I will stand up against the pervasive greed and consumerism that blights this world.  I will break my chains of depression and apathy. I will march on for justice.