Story work, tree, stairs, Oscar Wilde's "De Profundis"

Monday 11/10/25

Strong work this morning on a masterpiece of a story. Hard, intense work. These stories go so deep. Every shape of every letter in them is playing a major part. This isn't even writing. It's something else.

Many things have been published lately. I haven't gotten into any of that in this journal. The News section hasn't been updated yet either.

Ran 3000 stairs in the rain at City Hall. Did 100 push-ups.

The tree is up at Faneuil Hall sans lights. But it's there.

In "De Profundis" Oscar Wilde writes, "Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live. If any love is shown us we should recognise that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved."

Do you understand what he's saying there? Two big things, the first being in the distinction between "for" and "by." That first sentence speaks to this world right now. With narcissist after narcissist on social media. These people who post thousands of pictures of nothing but themselves. Who have nothing to say about anything save themselves.

They are broken. They are not whole. The path to wholeness and wellness has nothing to do with the path they won't get off of. It's a cry for help in a way, but it's also an admittance of...nothingness. A person's gaping nothingness.

Nobody is worthy of being loved because love is someone else's decision to be wholly something--and to give of themselves wholly--towards us and for us. And for themselves as well, because love expands who a person is. It's an expansion of the self that makes the person more human. Once a person understands that becoming more human is why we are here, and why they are here, they are tapped into something that most will never be. And they are truly alive, as most have never been, and fewer people than ever now. Love is larger than worthy conferment. If love is deserved, it's like a blue ribbon at the fair, and that's not what love is.

Who could understand these words of Wilde now? Anyone?

In the same essay, he talks about how love, for Christ, was imagination. He was right. Imagination and story are love. They foster connection. If we are rigid in our minds, if we don't get beyond parameters, if we fail to extend our emotional, personal, and spiritual remit, we cannot love. The extension doesn't happen without imagination, which is also a key component of empathy because we must go into a life that is not our own and approach feeling it, and knowing it, as though it were.

Who has imagination now? Anyone?

It's no wonder the world is what it is and people are what they are. Just as it's also clear--or it is to me, anyway--what the world needs. What people need. How they'd have to be. Try to be. Doing more of the the same of this dystopian this, is only going to continue to make it worse. Everything we are doing--everything--is wrong now. If we were trying to destroy ourselves, our minds, connection, wellness, and love--or even so much as the chance of these things--we couldn't be doing a better job of that.