Hi Liz

I have plans to go away tomorrow for a week so a few quick responses.

>  and I am very interested in
> your method of using the list as one of the mechanisms for producing the
> novel - seems to me a similar thing happens for all of us in our own
> present writings, though maybe we dont acknowledge it quite so clearly and
> specifically.

I live in a very isolated rural area in New South Wales so perhaps this makes
me more conscious of how useful email and the Internet is, although I do miss
the outings to libraries and galleries. Being able to post thoughts which
may well be wrong, in fact I very strongly suspect are wrong in some way I
can't yet see  and get some sort of response, even silence, can be very
useful. There can be little disappointments at times but better that then a
final failure. Also, just reading without needing to comment on what others
are doing and thinking is very useful and even just having contact with
different ways people think. I also have friends and we chat so it is not all
like that. It is nice to have a chat, also.

> Denial is a structure of folds turns and twists.  Terribly complex
> sophisticated and adaptable.  It is capable of acknowledging and at the
> same time obliterating.

Really like your comments on denial. The above comment, especially.

> I think I am amplifying this point in a sense - and 'child abuse' is
> another access on the power abuse - it is a symptom to go back to Freud.

Glad you said this about Freud. I had the feeling that Freud was doing
symptoms.

> at the personal level, isnt faith in the validity of my individual
> experience also a kind of profound sanity that provides a ground to
> question the bigger structures?  Does this idea of falsification and
> multiple narratives really work as a way of living and acting?  (which is
> the only meaningful test I can really bring to bear)

Actually, I just got another email from a friend and it turns out that
philosophically I was wrong to place it in terms of the false (Freud's denial
that is) and I should be looking at Kant, Critique of Judgement. But there
are limits to how much you should and can read. Just knowing I may be setting
down a deadend path on this is enough. As for faith, that is what I want to
get back to or restore in the writing. I want to have a world that can be
believed in, to restore faith in a world where belief and faith in this world
has been or is being destroyed by evil. To do this, aside from recognising
evil exists and and trying to understand the symptoms and structures of evil
(thanks Dom) you have to have faith in the first place so yes personal faith
in your own individual experiences is a must. Without any faith I don't think
I could write, speaking personally. No matter how terrible the things you
have seen and have experienced are you have to keep faith in your own person.
To lose this faith is to be defeated, is the way I think.

> speech and silence

Sometimes there are no words to say how we feel. Listen to the silence. It is
every word we will ever need. It is a tall ask and perhaps quite arrogant
but I would like to write in a way that makes the silence heard even if only
for a readership that does not yet exist. All one can do is at least try.

best wishes

Chris Jones