The Fight to Survive

The Fight to Survive

Navigating a collection of memories that have only the writer in common is a challenge.  Especially when the writer can be - and has lived and worked - all over the place.  And since my writing comes out of the places where I live and work - from Berkeley in the 60's and 70's to the film and photo archives of the Lithuanian KGB in Vilnius beginning in 1999- what I write about does change. For whatever reason I do not feel able to write about places I have not seen, or events without having had some personal contact - even if only with people who have been a part of them. So the rationale for this index is the particular niche they have in my mind.  Some are verbal pictures drawn with the same sense of entertainment that goes into my watercolors. Some are reminiscences of times and places I recall with more than usual pleasure. And some are hard-hammered attempts to make sense of some of my exposure - both accidental and chosen - to terrible events and places that are terror's landmarks in our world.  Having had now for over fifty years simultaneously both a door-opening professional standing along with the mobility of a free agent  I have had the luxury to choose paths that are both varied and which have led - and lead - to an interesting life.  The topical index below is an attempt to point out the focus of each of these writings sufficiently so that the reader can know ahead of time what each is about.  

I have been very lucky. I have spent years in a real diversity of culturally disconnected life and work settings. But it was more than luck.  In part I have sought them out.  But a different and major reason is the six-year term limits on the kinds positions I prefer and ask for.  I must admit that for whatever reason I do seem to end up in places where the next adventure might be found.  Reputations preceed us.  So people looking for a company man, I suspect, will not look for me.  I have described the pleasure I find in much of my work and the work is often congenial to an outsider.  rom my early years I have avoided wearing any proprietary tag.  For many if not most American men living and working in your own way in line with your own interests is really not possible.  I have escaped that, and escaped it because I wanted to.  In retrospect I have been fascinated by diversity.  Confronting diversities up close, which I have done, has required self-reflection.  Milosz told me, if I remember correctly, that his use of Native Realm as the title to my favorite one of his books comes from the phrase of Hegel - Self-reflection is the native realm of intellect.  Fortunately for me that self-reflection has been able to surface in writing. He went into the Issa Valley before he could return to the Nemanus. So these essays and articles are no more than scattered descriptions of my own  self-reflections, perhaps also as away to go back.  The titles of the sections here are an attempt to come up with some sense of order for the views of life that, in the living, I never seemed to worry about over much.  The Index is set up to separate what are a variety of approaches.  Op-ed comments and some memories of only personal and short-term interest; descriptions of places I recall in some detail probably because of the important role that visual memories have always played for me; and reflections on my often unanticipated exposure to the records of terrible events in our history.   Examples can be helpful.  But the example is a story in itself, so I just give the title it has on its own turf.   It is of an incident that was pivotal in my move into the life, which is actually an accurate description, not a teaser.  It is about 'Exploring Language.'