7.31 Thoughts on Michael Ventura

There are moments when we open ourselves to the world.

And there are moments when we open ourselves through reading. We stumble across something unexpected, something we found on the way to something else, something serendipitous, something that somehow suddenly crossed our path.

Today, for me, it was, once again, Michael Ventura.

I came across Ventura's essay "Report from El Dorado" some fourteen years ago. It was recommended to me on the fly and I searched it out. Generally, I find that most books and essays that people recommend don't carry the freight that the recommender intended. This essay changed me.

Ventura's writing carries authority, integrity, and soul. He is not afaid to ask tough questions, make powerful assertions, or
punch through the veneer of our surface thinking.

I've read two books of his, Shadow Dancing in the USA and Letters at 3AM: Reports on Endarkenment, and have lost both of them, having lent them out. (Which is the best way to lose a book, if you're going to lose it--you pass it on to some reader who may use it: "Go little book!") Both books have imprinted me.

Ventura's essay "Report from El Dorado" argues that Americans have replaced the living ground of their lives, which arises from their authentic experience in-the-world, to a virtual ground: tv and media. For V, this distinction explains a terrific loss in our culture and in our lives. We seek distraction because we cannot, or will not, face the difficult reality of our lives. We replace history with nostalgia, lived life with images.

Ventura is certainly not the first to argue this or point this out. But he is one of the best at creating a thoughtful shape that explodes our awareness.

So today I am exploring the Net--it's been 2 years since I've looked up any of V's thinking--and I start scrolling his recent articles from The Austin Chronicle. I guess I was hoping to find something on Iraq or the war on terrorism when I stumbled on a series of columns on the soul.

The soul!

I downloaded them and read them and am sitting here in my living room, awed at the timing. In this series of 3 columns, V reflects on his own life, important moments--difficult moments--when he encountered his soul. Or, in one case, became aware of his distance from his soul. V is willing to confront moments of great personal agony, personal estrangement, anguish and doubt. But it is how he confronts these moments, how he is willing to bare himself, and how he is able to connect his own personal experience with his obseravtions and his knowledge of what is happening all around us.

I mention all of this because this whole business of "soul" and "emptiness" and "connection" are isssues that I am dealing with, personally, and professionally. Turning 50, as a teacher and a writer, as a father and a citizen, has been torturous. I don't think that the struggle I've been facing this past year has anything to do with being 50 and much as it simply happens to be the time when all of this is churning up. So I have had some personal crises--for lack of a better term--this year, but must admit that these crises are the result of living and thinking in a certain way, which is to also say that I have not been living or thinking in other ways. And the wall between those two is becoming vaporous.

So when I read these 3 essays by V I was stunned. Here was someone who had experienced something similar to what I am now experiencing. And while the particulars are disferent, the struggle is similar. How does one face one's core, one's self, especially if you have placed all of your value, your sense of self worth, in something outside of you?

What happens when you separate yourself from your soul?

What happens when you recognize this split?

How do you deal with this, especially when this struggle results in depression, or alienation, or disintegration?

These are questions that we all face, but we face them, too often, in isolation, in private, in shame.

Reading V is a delivery of hope. Not the delivery of a pleasant message or a panacea. But a cold and honest look at what is happening. A cold shower. A reckoning that we can carry with us, and build on.