Sylvia's Journal

This morning I woke up without anything in my head to write. I wondered whether this was a signal that my blogging days were coming to an end. I listened to OnPoint on blogging yesterday which left me feeling silly about my daily writing, especially the public part of it. I can still write, like I used to in pen in a spiral bound notebook, why do it in public?

But then after the shower (that water again) the words composed themselves in my head and so it seems I am not done yet.

The last few years I have received a Christmas present in the mail from my boss fourth time removed (the boss of the boss of the boss of my boss). It is always a thin booklet (travel size) that is published by the Trinity Forum. It is also always, in one way or another, about truth and about people who speak truth to power. The title of this year’s present was a quote from Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel acceptance speech in 1974 (One Word of Truth). The booklet was about his speaking truth to power and the context in which that took place. I read the booklet from beginning to end with hardly a pause. When I was in my twenties I practically inhaled Solzhenitsyn’s books but I read them as two-dimensional pieces of prose (great writing, great stories). Now I understand that there was a third dimension to his writing and life that has something to do with speaking truth to power.

It’s a nice ideal but I am not sure I could actually do this. The price always appears to be unimaginable suffering and many losses. Yet it is this stripping down to the basics that all the great souls talk about as their redemption and saving grace. It’s what made them great. But right now, if I had a chance, speaking truth to power seems impossible; I am too attached to stuff.

To counterbalance this weighty topic I baked cookies in the afternoon. They are called The Night Before Christmas Cookies, a recipe I got from a Christmas cookie book that I took from the theme-of-the-month shelf at the Manchester library. They came out too perfect too eat; beside I know how much butter there is in them; but they are very photogenic.

In the evening we went back to the theme of the day, truth telling, by watching the Frost/Nixon movie. I had watched the whole Nixon drama from across the Atlantic without the kind of emotion that Axel remembers. Some people claim that Nixon comes out too good, a flawed human being who suffered much because of his mistakes rather than the tricky-dick crook he was. I don’t care, the movie was about something else, about being recognized, seen as significant, important while deep down not believing one is worthy of this and how that powers our actions, sometimes making us stupid, sometimes making us bad, or both as in Nixon’s case.

I left the theatre curious about the girl in the movie, the one who flew first class from Monte Carlo and then abandons her life plans to follow Frost and become part of a historical drama. Who was she and what happened to her next?