Letter: On Noticing Things

A letter to my sons.

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My ex-wife is transitioning my son James to girl. For eleven years, I have opposed it in family court. Texas Judge Mary Brown stripped me of my parental rights. She allowed my ex-wife to move my sons to California, so James could be transitioned. Justice Jimmy Blacklock, writing for the Supreme Court of Texas, ruled against my appeal, condemning my son to a life of lies and despair. California Judge Mark Juhas stripped me of all procedural rights to a fair trial. Soon, my son will be sterilized and later castrated.

I cannot visit or call my sons. These letters are breadcrumbs for them. I still love you. I have not forgotten you. I did not abandon you. I am still here for you.

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Dear James and Jude,

By now, you know about schooling. You know schooling is not about education. Schooling is about authorization and permission. The schools do not authorize you to notice things that interest you and to think about them for yourself. This can lead you to fear thinking. When you do think, it might be with a guilty feeling that your ideas are uninteresting. There is another possibility. You may be interested in your thoughts, but they don’t have much to do with what you are asked to think about in school.

Thinking Is Permitted

Schools have coverage requirements. They move ever on. So you acquire the habit of not noticing things that interest you. You have to keep moving. You don’t notice what you notice. You don’t even notice that you’re not noticing things. Schools don’t teach you that noticing is important. Even when you do notice something, it doesn’t have much to do with what the school says to spend your time on.

Everything you notice is important. I can put it in a better way: if you notice something, it’s important. You can’t notice things if you don’t allow yourself to.

Noticing means taking a run along a trail, and coming to a sudden stop upon seeing a unique flower. You have to give yourself the time to experience it. You can decide to keep on running. But you won’t notice. To stop running, you have to feel authorized to take a pause, to let yourself soak in an experience, and to think about what you find interesting.

You’ve been trained to disregard your own perceptions and interests. I want you to stop doing that. I want you to give yourself high regards. You have my permission to notice things and to think about them. You even have my permission to slow down and disregard people who keep telling you to hurry up.

Now, give yourself permission to notice interesting things. It’s easy. Each time you notice something interesting to you, you are giving yourself permission to do it again. Make it a habit.

The World is Not Pre-noticed

A good way to start: just notice what you find interesting. Some young men find this difficult. They think the world is completely pre-noticed. It’s already been taken in and contemplated and spit out by almost everyone older than you.

Perhaps you believe that. When you are free to think however you want, you might have a secret plan. It might even be a secret from you. You may try to think what the school authorities want you to. You notice something interesting. You imagine the possibilities it suggests. You might even create a story in your mind about all the possibilities. Then you stop yourself.

You think, “That’s not what I see in textbooks.” Ah, but someone who stopped to smell the roses wrote the textbooks. The textbook author just doesn’t tell you all the nice stories he concocted. He doesn’t tell you all the dead end roads on which he had to turn back. He doesn’t tell you how much he enjoyed exploring those dead ends. He just tells you where he got to not how he went.

And believe me, future textbooks will be written about even newer things noticed on those twilight dead end streets. The textbook author became an authority precisely because he struck out on his own, took a leisurely stroll, and picked a few interesting flowers along the way. He’s sure to show and tell about them.

You Can Practice Noticing Things

Can you practice noticing things? Yes. But you have to take note of your attitude. Noticing things requires humility. You have to stop pouring yourself out to the world. Then the world will pour itself into you by perception. Noticing things requires patience. You can’t hurry up when you’re observing something mysterious, perplexing, or beautiful. Don’t worry. You won’t get lost in useless contemplation. You’ll know when to stop noticing when it stops being interesting.

Noticing is when a detail stands out among the details. It’s when your sweater is snagged by a thorn of mystery. It takes some attention and some patience to unthorn your sweater without ripping it.

You don’t need anything special to notice things. You can do it any time and any place. But you must be willing to be attentive. Attention is the conduit, noticing is the flow, ideas and observations are the result.

Your Own Thoughts Are Interesting

After you’ve noticed things for a while, your imagination will suggest possibilities and impossibilities, will create phantasms that capture your own interests.

You will become interesting to yourself. And that is what we call maturity.

Then, if you are fated for it, maybe you can write a textbook and share some of the flowers you’ve collected along the way. Or maybe you’ll write a novel. Or you’ll sculpt. Or paint. Or make movies. Or, even write a poem.

And you won’t have to work at it. You’ll have to restrain it and guide it. You’ll just create because you have become creative.

so you want to be a writer?
by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.