Writing is hard

God damn but it is hard.

The thing I've come to understand about my brain is that while it loves writing, it doesn't actually like it. At all. For me, writing is grinding, painful, hard, hard work, and my lazy brain will take literally any excuse to avoid doing it. 

A lot of those excuses are pretty good! I'm a busy person. I work 5-6 days a week at two jobs, have all sorts of chores to handle, as well as this burning and inconvenient need for a social life. There's a certain amount of give and take, but they're all important, and I can't just ignore them.

Sometimes, it's not quite like that. Sometimes, when I actual I sit down at a blank page, blink, shrug, and go "nah". Actually if my brain had its way that's how it would be all the time. In order to actually get to putting down words I more or less have to put my own brain in a headlock and wrestle it into a very talkative submission. Occasionally it drops into hyperfocus mode and I blaze through page after page, but more often it never stops being a struggle. It will take any opportunity to get distracted, think about something else, even just check out for awhile.

When I look at a blank page I see a trackless wasteland, obscured in fog. It's terrifying. I can look a certain distance ahead, but if I plan too much I end up being wrong and having to revise, and if I don't plan enough I look at that big white page and mumble "perhaps tomorrow".

But that's the thing about creation. It doesn't get done tomorrow; it gets done today. Tomorrow is this nebulous ideal time to write when the light is perfect and you're energetic and awake and the stars have all aligned in the house of Saturn or something. Tomorrow is a hypothetical. When the next day becomes today, you'll still be planning to write tomorrow, and then the day after that, and the day after that.

Don't do that.

Write today.

On Ferguson

How much more is there to say? And what can I, as a white Jew, add?

Very little. Very little.

I could mention that roughly 0.003% of grand juries fail to return an indictment...but that's been said.

I could decry Special Prosecutor McCulloch for scuttling a procedure slanted entirely in his favor due to personal interest in the case, for his tone-deaf, milquetoast statements blaming people who talk about things online. But that's also been said.

I could rail about the utter arrogance of white people in murdering blacks with impunity, then throwing them in jail for being angry about it. But that's been said too.

I just...I don't know. I don't.

Bottom line is, in a procedure so heavily slanted toward the prosecution, we cannot blame anyone but the prosecution for failing to charge Darren Wilson for his crimes.

But we can blame ourselves. Because we're all part of this fucked-up system. We're letting it happen. By sitting down, covering our ears, we're letting it happen.

A grand jury hearing is not a trial. A trial is meant  to find out whether or not the law was broken; a grand jury hearing is to see if we even want to find out. By failing to even charge Darren Wilson, we're shouting loud and clear that we don't want to know.

We're not saying that Darren Wilson didn't murder Mike Brown. We're saying we don't care if he did.

"I don't care" are the three most terrifying words I know.

Mini book reviews, and exciting news!

You might realize I haven't been updating this blog with my usual languid-but-steady pace. There are a number of reasons behind that, but it really amounts to a combination of real-life hassles, other writing projects which for various reasons cannot appear on this blog, and one bit of extremely exciting news that's taken up a good bit of my time.

You'll have to wait until the end for that one. Sorry. (Not sorry.)

One thing I have had time for is lots of reading! Public transit is like that. So here are the books I've read recently, in brief.

Words of Radiance (Brandon Sanderson): The second book of Sanderson's epic fantasy saga The Stormlight Archive. Imagine Game of Trones set to the soundtrack of Pacific Rim. Epic in every sense (including its weight), this series is a joy to read and a genuinely optimistic take on a genre that tends toward the cynical, especially recently. It's also refreshingly diverse: almost nobody is white. (Too bad nobody told the cover artist.)

Code Name Verity (Elizabeth Wein): The story of two young British girls, a pilot and a spy, best friends separated in World War II. It's beautifully written and brilliantly constructed, and the relationship between these two young girls - whether you interpret it as romantic or not - might be the most positive, wonderful, and human dynamic I've seen between two characters, ever.

American Born Chinese (Gene Luen Yang): First in my binge on socially-conscious graphic novels, this is the story of a young Chinese immigrant growing up in California in the '80s. Its depiction of cultural isolation, erasure, and racism resonate powerfully with anyone not cut from the White Straight Christian mold, and in simple but effective terms it reminds us that being who we are is not a bad thing. It's actually pretty neat.

The Rithmatist (Brandon Sanderson): Sanderson's YA novel, read because I needed a break from the heavy emotions of Code Name Verity and American Born Chinese. A murder mystery, The Rithmatist suffers from excessive simplicity (even by YA standards) and its failure to find much for the young protagonists to do. Sanderson's clever magic systems, likable characters, and subtle social consciousness make it an worthwhile read, but they're like strong horses pulling a squeaky carriage. Decent, but far from Sanderson's best.

Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi): A graphic novel memoir of the Iranian Revolution from a woman who grew up during it. It's teaches a lot about Iranian history culture, but aside from the delightful Marjane herself, few of the characters receive attention besides a nameplate and an explanation, which makes it hard to connect with any of them. Persepolis is entertaining and a very good history lesson; I'm not sure it works as a story.

Maus (Art Spiegelman): Another graphic novel memoir, this one detailing the author's father's survival of World War II as a Polish Jew. Interspersed with his father's narrative on the Holocaust are scenes in the United States depicting Spiegelman's tense relationship with his father. Maus is...intense. It doesn't editorialize; it simply presents the events as they occurred, and gives us room to empathize with the people experiencing them. Read it. That's all I can say without a lot more space, and time to parse it.

And now, the news! I'm very excited to say I've landed an internship at CBS's Watch! Magazine! Two days in, it's already amazing, and I'm meeting great people and learning a lot.

Cheers,
Simon

Swimming with the student loan sharks

Swimming with the student loan sharks

I'm from a very unhappy medium in the lower middle class. As an electrician my mom made just enough money to disqualify me for a Pell Grant, but nowhere near enough to fill the gap between scholarships and tuition at Brandeis University. The "solution" was $50,000 in loans.

The first monthly payment on my Perkins Loan hit just after I moved to New York, and was equal to roughly all my money. The kicker: I received the bill several days after it was due. I'd just moved, and their confusion as to my whereabouts was perfectly reasonable. It was still terrifying, but nothing seemed amiss. The obvious solution would be to get in touch with Campus Partners, the company in charge of the loan, to explain my situation and get everything squared away. That should be easy enough...if Campus Parners answered their phones.

Or, after taking half an hour to answer their phones, they didn't hang up.

Or if their phone operators weren't specifically instructed to obscure and omit relevant information, even when specifically and repeatedly asked.

Or if they made it possible to get in touch with someone with any authority.

Or if they had an email address, or any other way to get in touch with them online.

After several days of calling Campus Partners despite their determined resistance, I learned that I could submit a forbearance request. In paper. No electronic documents allowed, even though an electronic document would be far quicker and easier for everyone. Apparently Campus Partners was only willing to process urgent legal documents in the least efficient form possible, which seemed to match their “delay and ignore” M.O. just fine.

Putting together this forbearance application took time. It required documentation of income, which is hard to pull together when you've just moved twice in a single month and commute four hours a day day. It also required a printer, which I didn't have.

It took a few weeks to put this form together, but just as I was about to send it - while at the post office, just before I sealed the envelope - Brandeis financial services called me and told me I could submit it electronically, straight to them. When I mentioned Campus Partners' behavior to them, they were concerned, and said they'd look into it.

Brandeis also told me it might be a good idea to consolidate my loans, to which I replied, "Huh?" Campus Partners had left out the fact that I could mash my Perkins Loan together with my Stafford Loan (whose monthly payments were based on my income) so I wouldn't have to pay extra money each month. In short, I’d be home free, at least in the short term.

After sending out the forbearance application and the loan consolidation request, I felt a weight lift off my chest, followed immediately by suspicion. If Brandeis could accept the form electronically at a moment's notice, why did Campus Partners need a hardcopy and several weeks to process it?

                       

Ah well, it wasn’t my problem. My forms were in, and I was set, right? Right.

About three weeks later, I got another letter from Campus Partners. Looking at the envelope, I nodded. This would be the confirmation that they'd received and processed my documents. Still nodding, still smiling, I tore open the envelope to find a...

                                                 

final demand letter?

I blinked and read it again. No, it definitely said "FINAL DEMAND LETTER", and it was definitely threatening to send my loan to a collections agency if I didn't pay up now.

After freaking out for ten minutes, I contacted Campus Partners to check if they'd received the form I sent two weeks ago. They said they hadn't. I then called my mom, Brandeis's financial department, and my boss, looking for some sort of way out of this. I also contacted an old mentor of mine, who mentioned that student loan servicers have a shady reputation, and that this one seemed shadier than most.

That put me on edge. Since they'd started sending me letters in May, Campus Partners' correspondence had been continually late. Feeling a bit sick, I took a closer look at the letter, and more importantly, at its envelope.

 

Dated July 12th...

...and postmarked July 23rd.

As you can see, the letter is dated July 12^th, but postmarked July 23^rd. For some reason, Campus Partners delayed urgent correspondence by 11 days, and deliberately sending my loan into collections seems the only motive for doing so.

In the past three months, I've seen Campus Partners make themselves difficult to contact, obscure relevant information, deceive both me and Brandeis University, fail to acknowledge receipt of forms, and send forms late to prevent me from responding.

I was lucky. When I spoke to Brandeis again, I learned they'd already pushed through their forms, and I was in the clear. But what if I weren't? What if someone else, dealing with this company, hadn't kept hammering at their phones for weeks on end? What if their forms got stuck in the mail? What if Brandeis hadn't picked the exact right moment to call? I don’t want to think of that.

And frankly, I shouldn’t have to. If our education and our livelihoods depend on the good faith and credit of student loan servicers, it is Brandeis’s responsibility to ensure that we can rely on them. It is unconscionable that this university deals with a company that deceives and robs those students it should aid and protect. Brandeis needs to vet its student loan servicers carefully and actively monitor their behavior to prevent this sort of abuse.

         

Campus Partners is a loan shark in graduation robes. You shouldn't have to with them, and Brandeis University shouldn’t make you.

An abridged version of this story has been published on the Brandeis Hoot.

                                                                                        

On Yom Kippur

With the help of several wonderful friends, I think I've finally been able to understand and parse the meaning of Yom Kippur and Judaism this year. It’s been wonderful and painful and enlightening, and I feel I’ve become a better person, a better version of myself, for it.

Have I?

I've been striving to understand the holiday through action: reading through the prayers in full even if i don't understand or agree with them, finding small ways to do good, to do better. But I've failed. That doesn't mean it was pointless. But I have failed.

I have not apologized to those I've wronged. I've been callous to friends and family, taking their presence and their love for granted. I have not forced myself to confront my own behavior, to better it.

The last of those, the least, I can make right.

When I graduated college, I had to move back home. And I hated it. Despite my mom's efforts to compromise, to support me, to help me be comfortable, I felt stuck, imprisoned. Alone, uprooted from the community I built with my friends in college, lost.

I wasn't wrong for feeling that way. Isolation brought out the worst in me: my loneliness, my moodiness, my tendency to view others as resources. I could feel myself becoming a worse person, and my awareness just made me hate it that much more. If I wanted to be the person I wanted to be, I would have to get back to where I belonged.

With little else to do, I worked toward that obsessively. In the name of keeping myself moving forward, I blinded myself to everything but my goals. That I eventually succeeded does not justify my behavior at the time. I didn't think about my past, and I was careless for the consequences of my actions in the present.

I abandoned friendships and burnt bridges. I was callous and distant to those around me. I relied too much of the kindness and support of a few friends without a thought for their own needs. I may not have hurt them, but I did take advantage of their generosity.

When you start to see someone as a hero, it's easy to forget they're human. It's easy to forget they need care too.

I'm sorry.

I can't fix the way I acted last year, but this year, I will be better. Where I once ran from others, I will stand by them. Where I once burnt bridges, I will build them. Where I once took love, I will give it.

I will fail, of course. I understand this. But if I can read this post a year from now and say honestly that I am a better person than I was today...

...well, that's worth something.

Matt Stover's Test of Metal puts us at the labyrinth's heart

I've played Magic: the Gathering since I was pretty young, but I make a point of not reading the licensed tie-in novels. To put it bluntly, they're not very good; at best, a guilty pleasure. In fact, I probably wouldn't have opened Test of Metal at all if not for one small detail: Matt Stover's name on the cover. A long time ago in a town far, far away, I read his novelization of Star Wars Episode III, and found it far better than the actual movie. Okay, I thought. This could be worth my time.

And it was.

Under Matt Stover's hand, what could have easily been Another Stupid Contract Novel becomes a genuinely deep discussion of how power stifles understanding and how trial and insight can help us become the best versions of ourselves. It’s about changing and becoming the person you need to be, and then, when that person is no longer the right person, becoming again.

Particularly brilliant is its labyrinth motif. There's much discussion of their design and purpose, but the true stroke of genius is Stover's careful eye toward structure. Test of Metal isn't just about labyrinths; it is a labyrinth, circling around and around until we end at the middle: the center, the goal, the answer. And like our antihero Tezzeret, we you don’t learn the solution so much as we become the person at the center, the person who understands themselves and the nature of the puzzle.

In a labyrinth, power is weakness, because having power makes us impatient, simple, direct. Power entices us to cut straight to the goal…but a labyrinth has no goal. There is no prize, no treasure at the center; the treasure is who you become by following its path. The center isn't a destination, it's just a signpost marking the end of the journey. The journey is the trial, and the trial is its own reward.

Even if you don't play Magic, I'd pick up this book. Some unfortunate casual sexism aside, Stover has crafted in Test of Metal a work of keen insight into the nature of human growth and progression.

Read it once to reach the center, to understand the puzzle. Then read it again

Speak again the ancient oaths: Trauma, recovery, and the Stormlight Archive

"It is the nature of the magic. A broken soul has cracks into which something else can be fit. Surgebindings, the powers of creation themselves; they can brace a broken soul, but they can also widen its fissures." - from the back cover of Words of Radiance, second book of Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive

Brandon Sanderson is known widely for works of epic fantasy with well-explored, almost scientific systems of magic. His Stormlight Archive, doesn't break the formula, but it does bend it with Surgebinding, a highly personal and human system that grants characters powers based on their personalities and ideals.

Using magic to literalize a character's other traits as a form of power is a common trope in fantasy, and I'm a big fan of it. It allows the writer to present the supernatural in an insightful and deeply human way, turning what might otherwise be a flashy action sequence into commentary on its characters without being any less thrilling. It's a good technique, and I've seen it done well in a lot of works.

Even by those standards, the magic of the Stormlight Archive is something special. Only characters who've undergone exceptional trauma and started on the path to recovery can become Surgebinders, and the exact form that their recovery takes determines what powers they gain.

In other words, Surgebinding literalizes recovery from trauma. That's more than good technique on Sanderson's part. That's wisdom.

As Surgebinders recover and grow, their powers increase; if they slide backward, or stop growing, or grow into something harmful to those around them, their powers fade or even vanish. Recovery isn't an event, it's a process, and it never takes the same form for two different people. One may cope and advance by finding strength in oaths and loyalty, another in exploring the nature of truth and lies.

Nobody is ever the same person they were before trauma; to survive it we must to change and adapt, and continue changing and adapting. Trauma hunts us down out of the past, tries to pull us back, break us again, and to fight it we develop, discover, and grow into something new. That we've been hurt is no excuse to stop growing. People change, or they die.

Life before death.

Growth is risky. Change is risky. Even if this new form is what we need, it may be toxic, something stifling, or even dangerous to those around us. Recovery is power. That we've gone through hell to gain that power is no excuse for abusing it. It's our responsibility to ensure that we develop in a way that protects and nurtures those around us, that the power we gain from recovery lifts up those around us instead of strangling them. And that takes a kind of power of its own.

Strength before weakness.

Recovery isn't an event; it's a process, and a struggle, and though we might be past our darkest moments, that struggle is hard. And it doesn't end. We keep changing, we keep growing, we keep advancing, though there's no goal in sight, no end to that work. That we can't see the end of our path, that we will never truly grow past our trauma, is no excuse to stop growing. All we can do is be the best we can, and keep moving.

Journey before destination.

As humans have the drive, the imperative, the responsibility to grow, to recover from our trauma and to ensure that our growth shapes us into a form that helps those around us. Sanderson is wise to recognize that, and genius to present it like this.