Ampersand Gazette #48
Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on some of the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …
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When our empathies have boundaries—when they stop at borders, races, ethnicities—when one group is freely granted them while another is wholly deprived, then our empathies are false. They have been weaponized. They are instruments in an argument. …
[This] generation has become highly attuned to intersectionality, the history and current expressions of various forms of oppression, and the ways in which colonialism, imperialism and capitalism undermine the concepts of equality and justice. …
I think it would be a great mistake to bemoan the position taken by many of these young people —the seekers of context, not the defenders of terror, of course—rather than seeking to understand it. …
In our country, many people are simply trying their best to make sense of a complex situation and coming to a conclusion that the context of the conflict, both historical and present, muddies the moral waters.
from an Opinion Essay by Charles M. Blow in The New York Times
“An Evolving Moral High Ground in the Israel-Gaza War”
October 19, 2023
Where to start … how about the notion of moral waters? We live in moral waters all the time, and much like the fish who apocryphally looked everywhere for the ocean, we are not aware of it. These moral waters are best served when we examine ourselves, and our own changing moralities.
Or, we could start here … do your empathies have boundaries? Like it or not, agree with me or not, the deepest truth is that most of our empathies have boundaries. This definitely an ouch if we’ll really look at it. The question I have is: If there are boundaries, are our feelings still empathies?
Or, perhaps, here’s a better beginning? Intersectionality is slowly seeping into the culture. Originating in the world of academia, as so much does on a theoretical level, at its core, it’s the idea that everything is connected. That one cannot consider poverty aside from racism, by way of one example.
Moral waters …
Empathies with boundaries …
Intersectionality …
Well, of course, Charles M. Blow is writing about all the outrage—on both sides—over the Gaza Matter. I’m not.
Or, I am, but from an entirely different perspective.
Ever since this new tetralogy has started coming to me, I find that I’m constantly thinking about the high-level simplicities that undergird a life. One of them is what I consider to be The Prime Directive of the Divine for our time. It is this:
We are all connected, and until we get this, our species can make no permanent headway in healing ourselves or the planet.
It’s hard to make boundaries in water, Beloved, but we try. Except in Gaza, all the waters are ebbing and flowing together. Everyone, whether it appears that some are winning and some are losing, is damaged.
Except about Gaza, people all over the world are ‘fighting’ for their ‘side,’ with all sorts of righteousness. They are performing empathy, to be sure, but a qualified empathy, an empathy with boundaries. Empathy that has exceptions is no empathy at all. It’s sympathy.
Oh, yes, also, except for Gaza, intersectionality is an idea whose time has come. Bravi! And yet, ‘everything’ is connected seems somehow not always to translate to: We are all connected. It would seem we reserve the right to define we.
This generation is right. Intersectionality must play a part in perception. Nothing occurs in a vacuum, Beloved. If one is poor, one is still poor in a particular place, time, and circumstance, all of which ask for consideration in order to fully address the poverty.
That business of everything being connected is true, and until we are willing to look at each and every one and every thing as connected, we will continue to feel as if our efforts do not make a difference.
That’s what operating at the level of theory will do for us. It demands simplicity, reductionism, and a deliberate ignoring of the mud at the bottom of the moral waters. It will not stand for much longer.
Now, consider this Letter to the Editor from this past Saturday’s New York Times …
To the Editor:
Re “Representative Jared Golden of Maine Calls for a Ban on Assault Weapons, Reversing a Long-Held Stance” (nytimes.com, Oct. 26):
Representative Golden, identified as one of the few House Democrats who opposed an assault-weapons ban, is quoted as saying, “The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure.”
I’m unimpressed by Mr. Golden’s newfound empathy for the victims of gun violence that materialized only when he and his constituents were affected personally.
Robert Wagner
New York
from a Letter to the Editor in The New York Times
“Death & Heartbreak in Lewiston, Maine”
October 28, 2023
Representative Golden was a theoretician until the effects of assault weapons rang his own doorbell. Then, he became a convert to the assault weapon ban.
What intrigued me most was his, and these days very, very rare, ownership of the responsibility of his own failure.
This is the reaction of a theoretician, which many of us are politically, to the wisdom of experience. What most theorists refuse to acknowledge is that all incidents, no matter how trivial, each one devolves to the experience of one or more persons. Always. No exceptions.
Mr. Golden’s response is too late, on one level, and right on time on another. Life isn’t lived in theory, Beloved. It’s a practice, practical, grounded in experience. Even our brains grow via experience (which is sometimes spelled: m-i-s-t-a-k-e-s.)
If, just if, We are all connected is The Prime Directive of Divinity for our planet and our species, when are we going to acknowledge it, and act upon it? Some of us do it now. If you do, great. Keep doing it. But if you don’t, isn’t it time to enter those moral waters, look for unconscious boundaries around our empathies, seek to understand how it really is all connected, and sink or swim with the rest of us?
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Here's one how …
Life has a way of tenderizing you, though. … I learned that living in a detached way is a withdrawal from life, an estrangement not just from other people but also from yourself. …
Being openhearted is a prerequisite for being a full, kind and wise human being. But it is not enough. People need social skills. The real process of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete actions well: being curious about other people; disagreeing without poisoning relationships; revealing vulnerability at an appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.
People want to connect. … The issue is that we lack practical knowledge about how to give one another the attention we crave. …
In any collection of humans, there are diminishers and there are illuminators. Diminishers are so into themselves, they make others feel insignificant. They stereotype and label. If they learn one thing about you, they proceed to make a series of assumptions about who you must be.
Illuminators, on the other hand, have a persistent curiosity about other people. They have been trained or have trained themselves in the craft of understanding others. They know how to ask the right questions at the right times—so that they can see things, at least a bit, from another’s point of view. They shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, respected, lit up.
from an Opinion Essay by David Brooks in The New York Times
“Essential Skills for Being Human”
October 19. 2023
At the risk of being reductionist, generally speaking, the diminishers are the theoreticians, all of whom claim that they are coming at life from a top-level perspective.
As I said, life isn’t lived from there. Life is lived in the everyday, the quotidian, the mundane, the magic … and the tragic … of the moment.
The illuminators are more often those who come at life from the wisdom of lived experience. They know that the magic is in individual experience.
This week, when you feel helpless before the animus of the side-takers, turn on your brightest, lightest self, and ask someone how they really are. It’s a start.
Then, ask another someone.
In the next issue, I’ll take us through a little more of David Brooks’ list of Illuminator Skills.
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Don’t forget this bottomline prayer. It works every time …
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And in publishing news …
As you know, I finished Gemma Eclipsing on Friday, the 13th—perfect. By that I mean the narrative. I was able to type Finis.
The image to the left is her chosen animal representative—a peacock. She is the actress in the family, so it’s perfect for her.
Okay, so front and back matter are written, and now I’m doing what I call The Evil Word List. It’s a single-page, four-column torture device, customized to each author, that comprises “bad” writing habits. Now, in themselves, they’re not bad, but added together, they are repetitive, and (I’ll admit it here, but just this once) lazy.
The list is actually (and one of the words is actually—ARGH) made up of things my editor has suggested I do ‘globals’ for over the years. I look at them as um, uh, or er in a speech. They’re slight delays for thinking of what comes next, and are unnecessary to the plot, and on top of that, slow the reader down.
Why should my editor have to slog through them when I already know what they are, and it’s best that I send him my best version of the MS rather than a lazy first or second draft. See?
It ought to take me two to three weeks to finish them all, and then, I’ll re-read the book one last time before I send it to Tony.
Tony, my editor (and if you need a good one, find him here), and full disclosure, my much beloved husband, bless the man, will then clean up whatever messes are left.
Speaking of which, he did a totally cool thing at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn in conversation with South Asian author S J Sindu. Here’s the video on YouTube. The conversation was fascinating.
His self-dubbed name for what he does is Book Husband. And that’s exactly what he does. He, somehow, has figured out how to live in the world that each of his authors has created, and participates avidly in that world. His gift is remarkable, so if this fall is a time to get going on that book you’ve always dreamed of writing, find him here with my heartfelt blessing.
And while the book is with him, I have a whole ’nother to-do list, but I’ll save that for when it’s time.
P. S. Oh! And I wrote the first scene of the next book on the 14th: Jacqueline Retrograde & Jaq Direct. Right on schedule.
I’m now considering changing the narrator of the first half of the final book—and I was more surprised than anyone at that! And I’m studying the world of Victorian debutantes. Go figure that.
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AND … if you are a person into free books … go to FreeBooksy and subscribe for FREE. I’m running a promotion on the first of my Mex Mysteries on Halloween, and if you love Mex, there are nine more ready and waiting for you!
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As you will know by now, a next, new speculative fiction series is starting to gather momentum, and I am hanging on tight. Research is still top of the list. The title for the series is:
The Phoenix Initiation
I have been given the titles of all four books in the series. The first one is:
Ancient Umbrage
The book takes on the healthcare system in the U.S., and its evil twin, the insurance industry.
I am still researching, but I am also ready to say that I’ve discovered something remarkable about the avatar for this book, who some of you might recognize. Her name is Lilith. It turns out Adam was a divorcé. I knew something was fishy about that Eve—she was the arm charm!
What I’ve discovered in my depth astrological studies is that there are actually five Liliths! Five!! And that each one represents the pattern of how Lilith plays out in your life, only in a slightly different way.
Right now, I’m seeking a few volunteers to have me create a Lilith Legacy Chart for them. If you know that’s you, please email me, and send me standard birthdate and year, time, and place (town, states, country) you were born.
The storyline of the books is coming to me slowly. It’s a process I treasure.
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Speaking of empathies, here is a map of the world with another directive from The Divine. Meditate with this notion sometime, and see what happens. I am, of course, more convinced than ever that And is the solution to everything, and so, Be Ampersand, Beloved, until next time.