About a month ago I listened to interview on a Hungarian radio station, the subject of which I've been turning around in my head ever since.  The radio station dispatched a journalist to some small villages in Hungary that had been damaged by the swelling rivers of the spring floods.  The journalist conducted interviews with many people, but his last interview was by far the most memorable. 

He spoke to a septuagenarian peasant who lived with his wife in a small two-room peasant house near the Danube in the central part of Hungary.  The couple had built the house shortly after they were married more than fifty years before and had raised four healthy children in the 500 square foot place. The floods had damaged much of the outer walls and had caused some unspecified damage within the house as well.  When the reporter asked the man if he had any flood insurance, the old man just chuckled. 
     "Insurance?" he said softly.  "What do I need that for?"
     "How will you pay for the damage without insurance?" the concerned journalist asked. 
     "I built this house with my two hands using materials from the land that surrounds us.  I will repair this house in the same way.  It will take some time and a little work, but with the help of my sons and some of my neighbors, it should be good as new in a month or two."
     The journalist, who was either concerned or skeptical or perhaps both, vowed that he would return to the village in month's time to check up on the old man's progress.  He returned to find the house completely repaired just as the old man had promised. 

George Szirtes, a translator of Hungarian heritage who resides in London and has provided the world with, among other things, some fairly decent translations of Sandor Marai's novels, is bashing the current Fidesz government for its dictatorial approach to Hungarian culture.  Szirtes laments the current government is actively trying to eradicate any philosophy, culture, art, and creativity that does not adhere to a patriotic party line by denying artists and thinkers funds, positions, support and recognition.  

You can read the article here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/06/hungary-culture-crushed?INTCMP=SRCH&utm_source=mandiner&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=mandiner_hungarianglobe_201308

I agree with the basic premise of Szirtes' outrage - I don't like the idea of art being used solely for ideological purposes either, but what bothers me about Szirtes's article is the double-standard he fails to declare and the bias he chooses to hide.  

Most of the Hungarian writers and artists Szirtes mentions in his article have shady roots in the old communist regime.  Peter Esterhazy recently discovered his father was a communist informer.  Marta Meszaros's parents were both ardent communists - so much so that they chose to move to Moscow in the 1930's.  Ironically, Meszaros's father was consequently killed in a Stalinist purge.  Even lauded film director Istvan Szabo, whose film Sunshine achieved international success and recognition, was a communist informer who provided the secret police with information about dozens of people.  

So, what's the big deal?  Well, what Szirtes does not acknowledge in his article is that most of the artists and thinkers he mentions, in addition to hundreds of others he does not mention, helped co-opt Hungary's culture for decades.   Many were rewarded handsomely for it with support and grants and cushy positions in the former communist power structure.   While these artists were towing the communist line in various forms, hundreds, if not thousands, of other writers and artists were censored, arrested, or simply blacklisted.  Fidesz's push to place what Szirtes refers to as fascist writers in curriculums and supporting "patriotic" artists, most of whom were suppressed and denied a voice for decades because of communism, is anathema, but somehow keeping former communist creators and their creations in the forefront of Hungarian culture is perfectly acceptable - nay, necessary to preserve Hungarian culture.

Uh . . . okay.  

Once again, I am not against the premise of Szirtes's objection to what is going on in Hungary at the moment.  Too much government influence in the world of the arts is not a good thing, regardless of the ideology being touted. Art should always aim to be higher than either politics or economics.  What bothers me is Szirtes's slithery obfuscation of the crushing and co-opting of Hungarian culture that went on for decades long before the current ruling Fidesz government embarked upon its cultural programs. Szirtes and his merry band of culture warriors must acknowledge this rather inconvenient past if they want to their concerns about the present to be taken seriously . . . by me at least.   

Passion, both as a word and as a concept, has been much in vogue over the last decade or two. In art and business it has evolved into a popular prerequisite of paramount importance. Passion has become a passport of sorts – and you can forget about getting on the party plane if you don't have your passion with you when you arrive at Success and Happiness International Airport. Inspired by larger than life figures like Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Anthony Robbins and the rest of the Passion Posse, we have quite slavishly evolved into society of passionate people passionately pursuing their passions.

Grocery stores are passionate about the freshness of their produce. Car manufacturers are passionate about the design and fuel economy of their vehicles. Lawyers are passionate about their clients' cases. Teachers are passionate about the academic success of their students. And the list goes on and on and on. Pick a vocation, hobby or calling and I'll guarantee you'll soon discover a plethora of passionate people pouring their plentiful passion into everything they do. Nowhere is this more true than in the world of writing. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen the word passion on author's blogs or heard the word used during interviews. Quite frankly, it's starting to make me a little nauseous.

Now, before I am accused of being a being a pernicious prick for pissing in the passion pot, let me take a moment to state that I really have nothing against passion per se. What irks me is our rather limited contemporary conception of passion. When most people hear or use the word passion, they think of it in two ways:

1. as a strong desire or love, often with underlying sexual forces intact
2. a strong enthusiasm or zeal

Is there anything wrong with Oprah Winfrey having an enthusiasm and zeal for producing television programs? No, of course not. Is there anything wrong with writers who have a strong desire to write and who feel energized, excited, and full of joyful glee when they sit down at their desks? Once again, no, there is inherently nothing wrong with that except . . . it's bullshit in the sense that it paints a very limited, incomplete, and misleading picture of what passion encompasses. This limited notion of passion has created a generation of people who believe they have failed as human beings because they cannot perpetually exist in a state of smiling nirvana as they pour their hearts and souls into their passions. Unfortunately, most of them are unaware that there is more to passion than that.

There is a darker and more shadowy side to passion that rarely gets any airtime on television or any shelf-space at your local bookstore. To discover what the dark side of passion is all you need to do is examine the etymology of the word itself. Our modern word passion finds its origin in the Latin pati from which later came the Late Latin words passio and passionem, which were then incorporated into the Old French in the tenth century to describe the suffering and physical pain Christ experienced between the night of The Last Supper and his death. By the early thirteenth century, the sense of suffering and endurance was extended to martyrs and, eventually, to suffering in general. The word was incorporated into the Greek from Latin to form the word pathos meaning emotion, pity, or compassion. In fact, it is only through these forms that the original meaning of passion survives in our minds.

When we feel compassion, we don't want to seduce someone. Nor do we feel particularly zestful or enthusiastic. Rather, we feel and experience the sufferings of another. The modern definitions of passion as sexual love or enthusiastic devotion appeared some time during the Renaissance and since then the original meanings of the word as signifying suffering and the endurance of suffering have become archaic and are not entrenched in the contemporary mind.

So, why the crap lesson in etymology? Well I, for one, like the archaic definition of the word. It contains both a mystery and a hidden truth I think most passionate people would be wise to discover. Passion is about more than desire and enthusiasm; passion is about pain and endurance. Passion is about the positive willingness to carry the burden of suffering. If you engage someone or something passionately thinking passion is nothing more than love and enthusiasm, you are setting yourself up for a horrendous disappointment and are sure to wake up to a mind-numbing surprise one day. The same goes for any goal you set yourself. There is bound to be suffering along the way. Will you have the strength to endure it? Or will you retreat the moment the suffering begins?

Being a grinning fool who jumps up and down on a sofa proclaiming his passion for the world is not enough. Passion demands the acceptance of suffering and the endurance to withstand and bear that accepted suffering. If you cannot deal with that side of passion, you are not truly passionate. Of course, most people opt out of passion when they begin to suffer. It's understandable, especially in our pleasure-pumped world. Say your marriage has become dull or boring and efforts to bring the passion, the desire, and enthusiasm back have gone nowhere. The pleasure-pumped world will tell you to call a divorce lawyer immediately and find your happiness elsewhere whereas passion will demand you stay and endure and try to work through the suffering and find a solution. The same goes for writing or anything for that matter. Real passion starts where suffering starts. Be strong enough to endure and you will understand the meaning of passion. The mystery will be solved; the hidden truth, revealed.

I am not going to lie. One of the main reasons behind my decision to become a teacher was the luxury of having the summer months off. Though I came to the profession rather late in life, one of my motivations for working as an educator was the lure of having eight work-free weeks during which I could alter the laws of physics by becoming the center of the universe and force everything in existence to orbit around me – at least for a short while.

Yes, I admit it, I was attracted to teaching because I relished the idea of two-months of unfettered “me-time” I could dedicate to traveling, reading, relaxation and, above all else, writing. Stephen Vizinczey claims that writers are born out of talent and time. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you cannot find the time to utilize your talent then your talent will go to waste. I have always believed I possessed a certain level of talent in writing – what I did not always have was the necessary time. Hence my decision to become a teacher was greatly influenced by the attraction of having two months a year I could dedicate to writing. And dedicate I did. After a couple of summers of false starts and dead-ends, I embarked upon a creative journey that eventually became The City of Earthly Desire. It took me three summers to write the novel and during those three summers I focused on very little else. I am confident I would have never completed the novel if I did not have those summers free.

Thus, summer has become my creative time. I look forward to summer every year not for the weather or the vacations or the barbeques, but for the promise of having eight weeks to myself during which I can write. It is my time to forget the world for a little while and immerse myself in the cold, dark waters of my imagination.

This summer has been different. This summer has offered no promise of writing; no refreshing dip into the waters of my mind. This summer there has been very little “me-time.” This summer has become a summer without writing, and I could not be more grateful for the experience. I did not have a chance to become the center of the universe. Instead, I was tugged into the orbit of a much smaller star with a much larger gravitational pull then I could ever hope to possess.

My wife Melinda landed a temporary job in mid-July. The position takes her out of the house during business hours four or five times a week leaving the care of our nineteen-month-old son Matthew solely in my hands. Now, this is not a post about parenting; I will offer no clever anecdotes, heartwarming stories, sentimental observations, or clinical analysis about being a father or what experiences I have had taking care of my child. There is a whole industry out there that focuses on those kinds of things and I have no desire to add anything to it. I will say only this: the world becomes a much simpler place and you must become a much simpler person when you are caring for a child.

Everything is reduced to its most elemental level while caring for a child. Days are once again dictated solely by the movement of the sun across the sky. Time adheres to a different set of reference points: eat, play, sleep. The outside world melts away. Your ego flares up occasionally demanding to be compensated for the sacrifices it believes it is making. You wrestle with it. Eventually, you learn to silence it. Once you do, you find your days become the sound of the breeze filtering through the trees, the patchwork quilt of light and shadow on a forest floor, the sound of small lungs drawing breaths, a smile at a skill learned or truth discovered. The dark waters of imagination grow deeper and colder and darker. You turn your back on it.

There will be time to wade into it all again. There will be summers filled with writing, but this summer will not be one of them. There is something inherently beautiful in the acceptance of that. It carries within it a certain sublimity of which you are barely aware as it drowns all the aspects of your life you thought were so important . . . writing foremost among them.